Aion Bank review: what the bank now called UniCredit offers

Aion Bank no longer exists under that name: since 17 November 2025 it has been called UniCredit. My verdict fits on one line. It is a genuine Belgian bank, covered by the Belgian guarantee fund, but its plan at 3.90 euros a month now only makes sense if that status matters more to you than the price.

Does Aion Bank still exist?

The bank, yes. The name, no.

The Italian group UniCredit completed its purchase of Aion Bank and its sister company Vodeno on 7 March 2025, for 376 million euros according to its press release. The name change followed on 17 November 2025. The Belga agency report carried that day by the newspaper La Libre summed it up in one sentence: nothing changes for customers, who keep their IBAN and their cards.

On 4 October 2026, the old aion.eu address redirects to unicredit.be, and the app is listed in the stores as "UniCredit PL, BE". PL stands for Poland, the other market of the former Aion and the one the acquisition press release names first.

Be careful with the review pages still floating around. Several comparison sites still show the Aion logo and a 2023 price list, with a Premium plan at 19 euros a month. I am not repeating any of those figures: on that date I could only find the documents for the Light plan online.

A Belgian licence and a Belgian guarantee fund

On this site, the question that comes before all others is legal status, because it decides how your money is protected. Here the answer is simpler than for any neobank on the market.

The bank was not born with the app. The company number is that of the former Banca Monte Paschi Belgio, renamed Aion in 2019, and that long-standing licence is what carries the account today.

Three practical consequences follow. Deposits fall under the Guarantee Fund for Financial Services, run by the Belgian federal finance ministry, so any claim follows a Belgian procedure rather than a Lithuanian or German one as with Revolut or N26 (the breakdown per institution is in our article on neobank deposit protection). An unresolved dispute can be taken to Ombudsfin, which the terms and conditions name explicitly. And the account is not a foreign account: you have nothing to report yourself to the Central Point of Contact, the NBB's register of accounts held by Belgian residents, and no box to tick in your tax return.

How much does the Light plan cost?

3.90 euros a month, or 46.80 euros a year before you have paid for anything else.

Source: fee information document for the UniCredit Light current account, dated 1 January 2025, and terms and conditions of 6 October 2025, consulted on 4 October 2026.

One line stopped me. The document charges 2 euros for an instant transfer and 0 euros for a standard one, while Regulation (EU) 2024/886 has, since 9 January 2025, barred euro-area providers from charging more for an instant transfer than for an ordinary one. The document predates that deadline and I could not find a more recent version. Treat that line as out of date until proven otherwise, and check the fee shown in the app; the mechanism is explained in our article on instant bank transfers in Belgium.

My calculation for a first year of everyday use: 46.80 euros of subscription, 5 euros for the physical card, 500 euros withdrawn from cash machines each month, so 200 euros above the free allowance and 4 euros in monthly fees. Total: 99.80 euros. Without withdrawals above 300 euros, it drops back to 51.80 euros. The currency margin, for its part, is low: 2 euros for 1,000 euros spent in dollars.

On savings, the regulated "UniCredit Standard" account showed a base rate of 0.65% and a loyalty bonus of 0.50% according to the data sheet of Test-Achats, the Belgian consumer organisation, as at 1 July 2025. On 10,000 euros left for twelve months, that makes 115 euros, exempt from withholding tax as on any Belgian regulated savings account while the interest stays under the annual threshold. That rate may have moved since; I quote it with its date, not as a promise.

The subscription was the promise, the licence became the asset

When Aion launched in Belgium, its idea was that of a gym: a monthly membership, and in exchange banking services with no hidden margin. Back in 2020, a customer was already asking, in a review left on the App Store, why pay around twenty euros a month when rivals were free. The bank replied by praising its savings features and a money-back guarantee.

Six years on, the objection has grown stronger. Revolut Standard cost 0 euros a month according to Test-Achats on 15 September 2026 and has issued Belgian IBANs since its branch opened, as we explain in the article on Revolut's Belgian IBAN. N26 also has a plan with no subscription, with a German IBAN. Paying 46.80 euros a year for an account and virtual cards, when the neighbour offers the same for free, can no longer be defended on service.

The argument that remains is legal, and it is a serious one. At Revolut the IBAN is Belgian but the licence and the guarantee fund are Lithuanian. At N26 everything is German, including an account you must report. At UniCredit Belgium the contract, the supervisor, the guarantee fund and the ombudsman are all Belgian, and the bank now belongs to a top-tier European group rather than to an investment fund. Keytrade Bank plays on the same ground of app-based banking with a Belgian IBAN, with a longer history among local savers.

One nuance to finish: 3.90 euros a month is still cheaper than many packages from branch banks. The right comparison therefore depends on what you are leaving.

What do customer reviews say?

Two opposite stories, depending on where you read them.

In the app stores the rating is good: 4.5 out of 5 from 3,500 ratings on the Belgian App Store, 4.7 on Google Play from roughly 3,740 reviews and more than 100,000 downloads, with an update dated 24 September 2026. On Trustpilot, the old Aion Bank page sits at 1.6 out of 5 from 560 reviews, 51% of them one star. The complaints repeat themselves: customer service that does not answer, funds frozen for weeks without explanation.

I do not put those two figures on the same footing. The Trustpilot page received only six reviews in the past twelve months, so it mostly tells the story of the Aion years, and that kind of platform draws angry customers first. Store ratings are about the app, not about how the bank handles a frozen account. A freeze for an anti-money-laundering check can happen at any institution, and the steps to take are in our article on a frozen neobank account. Here, at least, a written complaint followed by Ombudsfin makes for a clear route.

Bancontact, the question the documents leave open

The terms and conditions talk about Mastercard debit cards. The word Bancontact, Belgium's domestic debit scheme, does not appear in them, nor in the fee document. I draw no final conclusion from that, but it is the first thing to check for an everyday account, since the lack of Bancontact remains the leading reason a card gets refused in Belgium.

Who is UniCredit Belgium still a good choice for?

• You want an app-based bank without leaving the Belgian system: BE IBAN, Belgian guarantee fund, Ombudsfin, no foreign account to report.
• You often spend in foreign currencies and the 0.2% margin speaks to you more than the subscription.
• You are looking for a second regulated savings account at an institution separate from your main bank, to open a new 100,000-euro envelope.
• Conversely, if price is your first criterion, a free plan will do the same job for 46.80 euros less a year.
• And if you withdraw more than 300 euros in cash a month, the 2% above the allowance will soon weigh more than the subscription.

In short

A review of Aion Bank now has to be read as a review of UniCredit Belgium. The bank kept its IBANs, its cards and its Belgian licence, and that licence, with the Belgian guarantee fund and Ombudsfin behind it, is what gives it value against neobanks licensed in Vilnius or Berlin. Its Light plan at 3.90 euros a month does not win on price, and its customer service carries a reputation inherited from the Aion years. Before opening an account, check two things in the app: the real fee for an instant transfer and whether the card carries Bancontact. To place the offer against the free plans, our comparator lines up the neobanks available in Belgium side by side.

This article gives general information on fees and conditions; it is neither legal advice nor investment advice.

Sources: UniCredit NV/SA, UniCredit Light terms and conditions valid from 6 October 2025 and fee information document for the UniCredit Light current account dated 1 January 2025, consulted on 4 October 2026; UniCredit Group, press release of 7 March 2025; Belga via La Libre, "Aion Bank change de nom et devient UniCredit", 17 November 2025; Test-Achats, data sheet for the "UniCredit Standard" savings account as at 1 July 2025, and "Revolut est-il intéressant pour vous ?", 15 September 2026; Regulation (EU) 2024/886 on instant credit transfers; App Store, Google Play and Trustpilot pages consulted on 4 October 2026.