French banks don’t use TAN codes? Isn’t it an EU directive at this point? It doesn’t have have to be a dedicated hardware token or a chip TAN, mTAN or soft tokens are also acceptable.

Not French, but German here. TANs are obviously used for transactions, but I've never seen them used for login purposes. To add insult to injury, the _only_ permissible password length for my bank was 5 (five!) characters.

Looking to make a switch right now..

Sounds like Sparkasse, but hey, you can change your username to a longer, unguessable bunch of alphanumeric characters ;)

ING in Germany uses login tokens IIRC and HSBC globally uses SecureID soft or hard tokens.

Unless a 6-digit "password" that you choose and stays the same for as long as you wish counts as a soft token, no they don't. Well, most don't, although some do.

How do they offer SEPA transactions without TAN codes?

I don't actually know what are the TAN codes you are talking about, I guess, if they're some technical implementation detail I sure don't know about it.

For a SEPA transfer, you input the code of the account you want to transfer money to, then the amount and various optional messages and transactions codes if you want, then click "submit" and it's done.

These are the transaction authentication numbers which are unique for each new transaction:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_authentication_n...

For me in the UK to move money I need to generate a TAN using a SecureID token the TAN is generated by using the secret in the token and digits of the account number I need to transfer money too.

The same SecureID also generates OTP for 2FA login.

But there are other TAN schemes including pregenerated lists and TANs sent over SMS or TANs which are generated by using the smartcard in your debit card.