Free business bank account for companies + self-employed?

Our house bank was sold to a foreign bank.
The fees would be more than nine times higher in the future, so we looked around the banking market.

Prices and services of banks in the EU vary greatly.
Unfortunately some banks do not accept companies—only freelancers. Others only accept private customers.

First we noted which services we absolutely need.

Batch transfers via, for example, a CSV file are important to us.

Transferring our accounting data digitally from the bank to our online accounting software is also important.
Currently this is the file format "MT940".

Real-time transfers + credit card + credit line are nice, but have not been important services for us so far.

We also recorded the number of paperless bookings per month from the previous checking account (incoming + outgoing) to be able to compare prices.

A free bank account for our company (no monthly fees) would be optimal.
Interest on balances of at least 1% for the checking account balance would be ideal.

There are several online comparisons of business account offers for companies (bank comparisons).
We also have a second business bank account, which was unfortunately often not mentioned in these tariff comparisons.

It used to be uninteresting with regard to the services that are very important to us.
A few years ago it offered advantages in one service area, so we opened it as a second business account.
In the meantime the second bank offers all the services we wanted.

It is free (no basic monthly fees, no fees per paperless transfer in euros within the SEPA area).
You currently even receive over 1% interest credited each month.
Because of over 1% interest on our balance, we even earn a few euros each month with the second bank account.

We are now testing all services that we previously used with the first bank account. So far all tests have been successful.

We informed all authorities and companies that have a direct debit authorization from us about the new bank account.
They should collect their direct debits (amounts) from the second bank account starting in April 2023.

If all authorities and companies have implemented this successfully, we will inform all customers about the bank details.
We will cancel the old bank account soon.

There were initially problems with the MT940 file format, but we solved them very quickly and inexpensively.

Which business bank account is best suited for you?

This depends greatly on your individual needs.
The current competitive situation (prices and services of new banks, etc.) is also decisive.

--> Your eAssistentin will be happy to help you compare bank accounts.