Cash deposits with a neobank in Belgium

One neobank takes your banknotes in Belgium: bunq, and through a third-party network. Revolut, N26 and Wise accept no physical deposit here. The CASH points let you withdraw but not pay in. Here is why that wall exists, and what it costs to get around it.

One neobank takes your banknotes in Belgium

It is bunq. Its help page says so plainly: the Core, Pro and Elite plans give access to the PaysafeCash network, which covers Belgium among twenty-one countries. You generate a code in the app, you hand it over at the till of a partner shop, and the money lands on the account.

The other three, no. Revolut, N26 and Wise offer no physical route to turn banknotes into a balance on a Belgian account, and each puts it differently.

Why do neobanks not want your banknotes?

A cash deposit is the operation that turns banknotes into an entry on an account. It sounds ordinary. It requires a vault, a cash-in-transit carrier, insurance, a double count and a check on the origin of the funds, which is exactly the heavy infrastructure the branchless model was designed not to pay for.

bunq writes it at the top of its own help page: as a digital bank, it has no branches and no ATMs. The answer is therefore not to build a network but to rent one. PaysafeCash and Barzahlen do the counter work in its place, in shops that already run a till and an organised cash collection.

The serious objection fits in one sentence: if it were that simple, the others would have copied it. They tried. Revolut opened the service elsewhere in Europe, then closed it, and the contrast between its two help pages makes the point. On the Belgian version, the bank writes that you cannot yet deposit cash and promises to let customers know as soon as it becomes possible, with no date. On the British version, it announces that cash deposits were discontinued from 13 February 2026. Two opposite wordings, one outcome at the counter.

How much does a cash deposit on a neobank cost?

Between €0 and €47.50 for €2,000 in banknotes, depending on where you hand them over. The fee schedules below were checked on 20 September 2026 on each provider's official pages.

Applied to three ordinary amounts, those percentages stop being abstract.

Calculated on 20 September 2026 from the published schedules: the bunq fee applies to the part above the €100 free allowance of the billing month, the N26 fee to the full amount, and the CASH26 daily ceiling forces two visits for €2,000.

Forty-seven euros and fifty cents to put your own money away. I redid the sum three times before believing it, then the logic became clear: a percentage fee punishes precisely the profile that needs the service most, the one taking in regular sums in notes. For a €50 top-up slipped over by a parent, the cost is nil and the question never arises.

The CASH points take your card, not your notes

Withdrawing, yes. Depositing, no.

The CASH network, operated by Batopin, is a joint venture of Belfius, BNP Paribas Fortis, ING and KBC, and it has absorbed most of the country's ATMs. Any card can withdraw euros there, including a neobank card licensed abroad. Depositing, however, is reserved for customers of Belfius, BNP Paribas Fortis, Fintro, ING and KBC or KBC Brussels, and the network's official page repeats it three times.

Two rules complete the wall, and they surprise even customers of those five banks. A deposit always credits the account linked to the card inserted, so you cannot pay into someone else's account, and you cannot borrow a friend's card to feed your neobank. The machine also swallows euro banknotes only, one hundred and fifty at most per operation, and never a coin.

Coins are exchanged free of charge at the National Bank of Belgium, the country's central bank, by post or at its Brussels counter. Torn notes the machine rejects end up in the same place.

One Sunday in May, after a car boot sale in Waterloo, I was left with €340 in small notes and a single banking app on my phone. The CASH point on the main road did show the deposit symbol. My card went in, the menu only offered a withdrawal, and the notes slept in a drawer until Monday.

Do you need a Belgian account to deposit your notes?

Yes, as soon as you handle cash more than two or three times a year. The answer is less elegant than the idea of a banking life lived entirely inside a phone, but it is the only one that survives the fee schedule.

The realistic setup takes two lines. A Belgian current account, chosen for being free rather than for its app, works as an airlock: you deposit the notes at a CASH point, then transfer the money to the neobank, instantly and at no cost in either direction. That Belgian account is useful to you anyway, for the mortgage and the rental guarantee, two files no neobank active here handles.

I have worked this way for two years and have never managed to drop it. My Belgian account usually shows a three-figure balance, it does two things, and I keep it open for exactly those two things.

Three thousand euros, the ceiling Belgian law puts on cash

The limit does not apply to deposits, contrary to what you often read. The Law of 18 September 2017 caps cash payments and gifts at €3,000 per transaction, or per set of operations that appear linked: same parties, same object, close in time. Selling a car for €6,000 in two instalments of €3,000 gets around nothing. The detail is published by the FPS Economy, the Belgian federal public service for the economy, which also runs an information line on the subject.

The real filter sits elsewhere, and it does apply to deposits. Every provider must know the origin of the funds it receives, neobanks included, and a payment that breaks your habits will trigger a request for supporting documents. Without a quick answer, access to the account can be suspended while the check runs, as set out in our article on a frozen neobank account.

Six checks before relying on cash

• Does your plan include deposits? At bunq the service follows the Core, Pro and Elite plans, not a trial offer.
• Will the partner shop accept the amount you intend to deposit? A bookshop till does not take €1,500 in notes as easily as a supermarket.
• Does the CASH point you are heading to accept deposits? The symbol appears crossed out on screen when the function is unavailable, and not every point offers it.
• Is your card linked to the right account? The notes credit the account of the card inserted, never another one.
• Have you sorted your notes? No rubber bands, no paper clips, no torn notes: according to Batopin, two jams out of three come from a handling error.
• Could you evidence the origin of the funds if the question came the next day? An invoice, a contract or a sales slip usually does the job.

Is a neobank disqualified if you handle cash?

Not disqualified. Incomplete.

The criticism deserves an honest weighing, because it condemns a whole category over a function most people never use. Febelfin, the Belgian financial sector federation, has tracked the retreat of banknotes in favour of cards and mobile payments for years, and an employee paid by transfer who settles everything with Bancontact, the Belgian domestic debit card scheme, can go a full year without a single note to pay in. For that person, the missing counter is an abstraction.

The sum changes for a hairdresser, a driving instructor, a market trader, a landlord whose tenant still pays in cash. There the deposit is not a comfort but a weekly operation, and a 2.5% fee on every round ends up outweighing all the currency-conversion savings collected abroad.

The nuance runs the other way too, and it is rarely said: neobanks are not alone here. The Belgian branch network is shrinking, staffed counters are closing, and the five banks behind the CASH network have themselves moved deposits from the branch to the machine. The wall does not separate new from old. It separates those who pooled a network of vaults from those who never had one, and it follows the same mechanics as the Bancontact gap: a domestic service, built between local players, that a provider licensed elsewhere cannot join.

In short

Paying in cash remains the banking function neobanks serve worst in Belgium, and the only one none of them can fix alone. bunq manages it by renting the PaysafeCash network, at 2.5% above €100 per billing month. Revolut points to a future availability with no date, N26 keeps CASH26 for three countries that are not ours, Wise has never taken a banknote. The Batopin CASH points, for their part, keep deposits for customers of five Belgian banks. If cash passes through your hands more than twice a year, keep a free Belgian account as an airlock and use the neobank for what it does well. Our comparison tool puts the offers side by side, our quiz decides in two minutes, and our article on switching banks details what actually moves when you make the jump. This article compares fees and conditions; it is neither legal advice nor investment advice.

Sources: bunq help page on cash top-ups via PaysafeCash and Barzahlen; Revolut Belgium help page on cash deposits and Revolut United Kingdom help page (discontinued on 13 February 2026); N26 support, CASH26 conditions and limits; Wise documentation on account top-up methods; cash.be and Batopin, deposit rules at CASH points; National Bank of Belgium, exchange of banknotes and coins; FPS Economy, legal restrictions on cash payments and the Law of 18 September 2017; Febelfin, use of payment methods in Belgium. All pages consulted on 20 September 2026.