Six months with Lidion Bank: what nobody tells you about PickTheBank

Let me say it upfront: I did not stumble on Lidion Bank by accident. I had spent the afternoon recalculating the interest my Spuerkeess passbook had paid me over the year. Thirty-four euros. On a balance that averaged around twenty thousand. I might as well have played those twenty grand at the national lottery; statistically it was probably equivalent.

So that Sunday evening, I open PickTheBank — the Latvian-Luxembourg platform a colleague had mentioned during a coffee break two weeks earlier, with the exact shrug you give when you're not quite sure you made the right call but it's paying out anyway.

Sign-up: 19 minutes, stopwatch in hand

Let me be precise: I actually timed it, because I wanted to see whether the "100% online" promise really held or whether we'd end up, as always, with a signed registered letter to bring to a branch. Verdict: 19 minutes to open the account, ID verification included. The ID is scanned via webcam, the animated selfie is requested (blink, turn your head right — feels like a very short yoga class), then you wait.

The human verification took about three hours, which is perhaps the only thing that vaguely worried me, because I had not received a confirmation email in the meantime. No pretty waiting page, no little animated rabbit. Silence. And then, at 10:47 PM, a sober email: account activated, welcome.

The initial transfer, and the detail nobody tells you

First transfer: €20,000 from my BIL account. Surprise. PickTheBank redirects you to a Latvian IBAN (LV…) because Lidion Bank is, legally, a Latvian bank operating under free provision of services in Luxembourg. It is perfectly legal, it is covered by the Latvian deposit guarantee up to €100,000, but seeing an IBAN that doesn't start with LU when you're wiring your savings always gives you a small pang.

A practical detail nobody mentions: the standard SEPA transfer took 36 hours to arrive on Lidion's side. Not instant, not urgent. If you're counting on a rate that starts on a specific date, plan two business days ahead. My BIL banker gave me a sad look when I justified the transfer ("external savings", I said, carefully avoiding the word "competitor"). He made no comment.

Six months later

I had locked the whole thing for 12 months at 2.45%. At the halfway point, the interest is not yet credited — that's normal, the contract pays at maturity — but the PickTheBank dashboard shows the accrued interest in real time. As I write this, it reads €245.03. On an equivalent Spuerkeess passbook I'd have around €38. Do the math; the delta pays for two months of average grocery runs at Cactus.

No sales calls. No follow-ups offering me a life insurance contract, a Luxembourg PEA (which doesn't exist, but they would no doubt have invented one), a consumer loan. The silence is, in itself, a service rendered.

What I'd do again, what I wouldn't

I would do the deposit again — without hesitation. But I would never put more than €100,000 in one place, because of the guarantee cap. And I would not put my emergency fund there: the money is locked until maturity, and even though Lidion accepts early exits under conditions, the yield collapses, and tough luck.

The real change, in the end, is psychological. You stop seeing your savings as a dormant thing that a bank condescends to look after for you. You treat it for what it is: an asset that has to work, and that you can legitimately move from one player to another depending on what you get out of it.

Note: this article relates a personal experience. The rates mentioned were those in force when the account was opened (November 2025); conditions evolve. PickTheBank compensates LuxÉpargne for signups via our links — this did not influence the content of this story, but it is honest to say so.