Painfully high fees, inflexible working hours, byzantine bureaucracy and slow, hard-to-use apps – like most young people, the founding team behind neon was always annoyed by how traditional banks moved at a snail’s pace. They thus took matters into their own hands in 2019, spearheading a revolution with the launch of the first independent bank account app in Switzerland: an easy, transparent and exceptionally low-cost alternative.
Reliability translated into the 21st century
neon combines the stability of a Swiss bank with the practicality of modern apps. You can open a bank account in just 10 minutes – entirely online, of course – that is also insured with unconditional public deposit protection of up to CHF 100,000.
With growth of more than 300% by 2020, neon showed that this combination is a winner, and that it can also sustainably revolutionize the Swiss banking scene with neon green, the (literally) green banking alternative that fully offsets greenhousegas emissions generated from account administration.
Straightforward, approachable, informative.
And persuasive.
The company places particular emphasis on written communication. It needs to be straightforward and approachable, while also being informative and persuasive. For neon, this means clearly comprehensible services, nimble newsletters and social media campaigns, comprehensive FAQ pages and precise, easy-to-understand terms and conditions – they’re being entrusted with your money, after all! For all this, they turned to Supertext, which ensures that neon’s texts really hit all the right notes across English, French, German and Italian.
This collaboration has produced nearly 400 orders, from newsletters to website text, in-app content, press releases, appealing posts for the blog and social media channels through to precise specialist translations of privacy policies.
More than just words
The partnership has been growing continuously since 2018. Supertext’s expertise extends beyond just words and sentences – efficiently managing multilingual communications is equally important. In just one example, Supertext worked in close collaboration with neon to create glossaries for each target language early on. These define the most important specialist terms and product names, ensuring that communication remains consistent across all languages.
Collaboration was also crucial in selecting the right language specialists for the job. For neon’s first orders, Supertext presented several candidates for each target language. That way, the neon team got a feel for any stylistic subtleties and could decide on a specialist for each language who best fit their desired brand voice.
Getting the hang of it
From the start, neon has counted on Supertext for its multilingual communications. It’s a decision that Gabriela Neuhaus, Communications & Marketing Manager at neon, would make again in a heartbeat:
“It’s fun to grow together with a partner. At neon, we have a very specific brand voice, which Supertext has gotten the hang of in every language. Getting a translation done is quick and straightforward with the Supertext platform. That’s been to our benefit, since we depend on tight deadlines and last-minute changes.”
The Superteam is looking forward to where the journey will take both companies next. This summer, neon set a course for its next round of growth with a very successful crowdinvesting campaign. It raised CHF 5 million from more than 1,700 investors in less than an hour, all of which will now be invested in the continued development of the app.
Cover image courtesy of neon