In a letter to customers, Nest Bank announced that new service regulations will take effect on 6 November 2024. It shows that the bank will withdraw the so-called favorable currency conversion service from its offer. It will, therefore, only be active until 5 November.

It is a service - offered to individual customers and businesses - that allows them to exchange currencies at preferential rates between accounts held with Nest in different currencies. The former can exchange euros, dollars, and British pounds. At the same time, business customers can exchange Swiss francs, Czech, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish crowns, Hungarian forints, and Romanian lei.

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The service is not free of charge. There is a one-off activation fee at the start. For individual customers, this is €1, $1.3, or £0.8, depending on the currency account you have covered by the service. The bank also charges a monthly subscription fee of €0.3, $0.35, and £0.2. Corporate customers pay the same as individuals for activating the service (plus PLN 5 for the ability to exchange currencies other than the euro, dollar, and pound), but more for the monthly subscription: 1 euro, 1.3 dollars, 0.8 pounds, and PLN 5 for other currencies.

Withdrawing the ‘favorable currency conversion’ service from its offer, Nest Bank wants to focus on promoting another currency exchange solution among its customers - Nest Kantor, which has been on offer from the bank for almost a year. Access to the e-kantor (via online or mobile banking) is possible after prior activation of the service and acceptance of the terms and conditions by the customer, and using it is free of charge.

The list of currencies available at the Nest Bank exchange office is the same as for the ‘favorable currency conversion’ service, so for ‘retail,’ it is in euros, dollars, and British pounds. At the same time, it is a total of the 10 currencies previously mentioned for businesses.

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But is it cheaper to exchange currency in the free Nest Kantor than in the paid favorable currency conversion service? It is difficult to say this unequivocally because the rates within favorable currency conversions change every half hour, while in Nest Kantor, they change every two or three seconds. You can check this indicatively by comparing the rates at a given time. Thus, on Thursday, when writing this text, the standard euro exchange rate at Nest Bank was PLN 4.48. At around 2.30 p.m., the rate at which you could buy the currency with favorable currency conversion rates was around PLN 4.32, while at Nest Kantor, you could exchange euros for PLN 4.30, which was cheaper.

We recently reported on other changes at Nest Bank. At the beginning of September, a new mobile app version will be launched, which includes further features of N!Asystent, Nest Bank's artificial intelligence-assisted mobile chat. As previously announced by the bank, customers can order transfers through the new version and have a voice conversation. Currently, only a text option is available.