10 ms·

How we got customers to sign up to Monzo in the early years

97 points by angristan 4y ago

substation13 4y ago
How do they make money?
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  Interest on loaning your current account balance out.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- sksksk 4y ago
  - Interchange fees (Monzo take ~1% of every card transaction) - Packaged account fees (Monzo Plus, Premium and business Pro) - Lending (Overdrafts, Personal Loans, Credit Card) - Interest on bank deposits
  - blibble 4y ago
    they also charge you to take your own money out and put your own money in(!!!) Cash withdrawal in pounds in the UK: First £250 in a rolling 30-day period free, 3% after that Cash deposit: £1 per deposit to pay in cash at any PayPoint source: https://monzo.com/legal/fee-information/ https://monzo.com/legal/fee-information/
    - 55555 4y ago
      What the heck?
    - willyt 4y ago
      I was surprised by this and it turns out its a bit of a misrepresentation as you get unlimited fee free withdrawals if you meet one of these criteria which, in the UK, pretty much anyone except a teenager with no job will meet: At least £500 was paid into a Monzo account in your name over the last rolling 35-day period, and you have at least one active Direct Debit on the same account in the same period. You’ve received a Department of Work and Pensions or a Department for Communities’ payment into a Monzo account in your name over the last rolling 35-day period. You’ve received a student loan payment into a Monzo account in your name over the last rolling 8-month period. You’re sharing a Monzo Joint Account with someone who has done at least one of the above.
      - blibble 4y ago
        it's not misleading, it's true if you lose your job, you're now being charged 3% to pull your own money out (and regardless: they still charge you to deposit your own money, unheard of for retail customers)
        ascorbic 4y ago
        The criteria seem to be mostly designed to ensure that people who aren't using it as their main account can't do things that cost Monzo lots of money. That said, if you want to deal mostly with cash then Monzo probably isn't for you, and I think they're ok with that.
- danpalmer 4y ago
  The short answer is that they don't really. UK retail banking is notoriously low margin, and all of the major banks struggle to make anything from their consumer businesses. Charging for bank accounts is not something the UK market accepts. They'll likely cover costs in the long term, and their business banking will probably do fine, but I suspect the valuations aren't justified. The main way that the major players make money is through things like mortgages, wealth management for the very wealthy, and through their investment banking arms. Starling is another startup bank, a main competitor to Monzo. While they're decidedly less "cool", they seem to have targeted business banking much more, and I suspect that's why they're now in a better position. Monzo went big on Monzo Plus and even on its ~3rd? iteration, it seems to have had a lacklustre reception. I'm Monzo user #13, about as onboard with the idea as I could be, and I find it unconvincing. Monzo have just launched Monzo Flex, an easy payment system like AfterPay/ClearPay/Klarna. I'd normally expect that to do well but it's about 2 years too late and going into a recession is probably not the right time. Hopefully it'll do well as we come out.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Starling makes money from business accounts (they pocket the interest on those, and that interest amounts to more considering business accounts keep a larger balance) and I believe also provides services to other payment companies, essentially SaaS-ing their tech. It's a shame because this is something that Monzo could've done just as well and there's absolutely a place (well, was - that's now taken by Starling) in the market for it. Natwest still charges extra for a "next-gen" business account that allows multi-user access to a web UI, and I bet it's terrible - this is something a company can Monzo could've built in days based on their existing modern tech at a time where there was nothing like it in the market.
    - danpalmer 4y ago
      Monzo do have good tech, but I've also heard that there is a "surprising amount of legacy tech" there as well. I'd interpret that as either they do too many re-writes of things, and/or they're perhaps not building at the level of quality that they should have been. They have some excellent engineers in the early team, but I've also seen a lot of very inexperienced people go there, so that in combination with a "move fast" mentality, will likely result in a lot of codebase issues and churn. Starling seem to have taken a "slow and steady wins the race" sort of approach, and had a bunch of experienced engineers build a boring old Java app. Nothing special but I'm not surprised that it is working out ok in the long run.
Nextgrid 4y ago
Good old Monzo times. Sadly, in my opinion the company took on too much investment and was now bound to deliver tech-company returns with a product that fundamentally isn't compatible with them. This led them to become yet another bullshit "growth & engagement" operation and ultimately killed the appeal of the product, all while competitors such as Starling Bank stepped up their game and delivered a very similar product that is not only profitable but doesn't have those "growth & engagement" vibes because they didn't have the same pressure and could afford to take things slow.
- klelatti 4y ago
  A bit ironic given Tom literally worked for Starling at the beginning. A bit odd that this doesn’t get a mention.
  - blibble 4y ago
    yeah, as far as I'm aware the only reason Monzo exists is because of a falling out between Tom and the Starling CEO I don't know what really went on, but Starling's side was reported in the UK press: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/starling-bank-boss-anne-boden-how-monzos-tom-blomfield-tried-to-oust-me-306xdc0nl https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/starling-bank-boss-anne-b...
    - fumblebee 4y ago
      Steven Bartlett has a really insightful with Tom Blomfield about this [1], and then also with Starling CEO Anne Boden [2]. While I'm generally not a great fan of his podcast, these two I found to be fascinating. [1] https://podcasts.apple.com/dk/podcast/e86-monzo-ceo-on-death-threats-depression-digital-banking/id1291423644?i=1000527067065 https://podcasts.apple.com/dk/podcast/e86-monzo-ceo-on-death... [2] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e107-starling-bank-building-a-%241-5-billion-business/id1291423644?i=1000542673404 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e107-starling-bank-bui...
      - klelatti 4y ago
rand49an 4y ago
Sadly closed my Monzo account down recently after applying for a joint account with my partner and being denied with no explanation (both long term users, good credit etc). Apparently a common story. Opened a Starling account and got one straight away. It's a shame because the Monzo user interface is miles better.
- 3adawi 4y ago
  I have this same issue - really weird - I have a joint account already with someone on my Starling and can't start a second one, anyone know another alternative I could use for a joint account?
- srmarm 4y ago
  This mirrors my experience a couple of weeks back. Having come across many others with the same problem I almost wondered if it was a case of pretend to have a feature to gauge interest (I'm sure it wasn't - I hate those things!) I also ended up using starling instead - perfect really. While I like the Monzo travel bits when travelling I find bank accounts much of a muchness really for my basic needs so don't have any real loyalty.
  - arranf 4y ago
    For what it's worth I've had a joint account for years. It works fine but there are some wrinkles - mainly that it's not a first class citizen. Split the bill and other Monzo specific features only work with your individual account.
- varispeed 4y ago
  Starling is no better, you were just lucky. I found Starling customer service appalling. Basically "go somewhere else if you don't like it".
  - dazc 4y ago
    I have a monzo personal and business account and I haven't had any major issues. As a former Barclays customer, they'd have to be fairly terrible to be any worse though. I did try an open a Starling account once but they claimed my phone number was already linked to an existing account, which I found strange and wasn't prepared to jump through the hoops required to prove otherwise.
varispeed 4y ago
[flagged]
jtwigg 4y ago
Earlier this year my partner and I switched our joint account from Monzo to Starling simply because we both hated using the Monzo app. Navigating the app feels unnatural to us and probably due to how infrequently we use it, we never learnt to live with it. Last week I finally closed my personal Monzo account as I only used it for one small DD a month and much prefer the Starling and NatWest apps.
- Cxckers 4y ago
  I made the same switch due to Monzo refusing me and my partner a joint account. Starling had no issue with giving us one
- varispeed 4y ago
  I have used Starling app and I couldn't make sense of statements. I think it's equally bad as Monzo. Also I kind of despise the idea that you have to have an app to access the account. After trying these "challenger" banks I am staying with my good old High Street bank where I can access my account from the web and it does not have any confusing bells and whistles.
  - kieloo 4y ago
    I don’t know about Monzo but you can access your Starling account on the web.
    - dazc 4y ago
      You can access a monzo business account on the web to access statements and such. I believe they also have an emergency web access feature for personal accounts. https://monzo.com/blog/2018/06/13/how-to-get-online-in-an-emergency https://monzo.com/blog/2018/06/13/how-to-get-online-in-an-em...
      - varispeed 4y ago
        Monzo business account is very much useless as it isn't connected to SWIFT.
deeptote 4y ago
Given Monzo's hiring practices, I'm not sanguine about the future of this company. I myself went through their interview process not long ago and to say it lived up to the sentiment of the glassdoor reviews is putting it mildly. Several rounds, silly armchair-psychologist behavioral questions, and the interviewers made it blatant that they didn't want to be there. Did my last interview at 4pm one day, got rejected by 8am next business day. I've gotten offers from Google, Amazon, etc so I know I interview well, not sure what happened there but really got the vibe that their employees are never quite sure if they're doing well, and management likes it that way. They're a bank struggling to market themselves as a tech company.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  I’d you have offers from Google and Amazon then why are you interviewing at a place like Monzo? They can probably tell you’re both wasting your time so rejected you on that.
  - sonthonax 4y ago
    Because Monzo will pay more than Google or Amazon in the UK.
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      I didn't think anyone paid more than Google?
      - nly 4y ago
        Facebook pay better than Google in London from what I've heard.
    - shrikant 4y ago
      This hasn't been the case in my experience interviewing at all of those three -- both Google and Amazon's comp for a similar role and level at Monzo were way higher. Edit: to clarify, I didn't actually end up interviewing at Monzo because the recruiter said no pretty much right away on hearing my salary ask.
mojuba 4y ago
On a general note, referral rewards are not necessarily a good thing i.e. when you say "invite a friend and get $X". Turns out non-money rewards work better. A quote from [1]: > When money comes into play it switches us from ‘social mode’ to ‘business transaction mode’. We become more selfish, distant, less helpful, and less willing to be helped. You don't even need research to back this, it seems obvious when you think about it. [1] https://tips.ariyh.com/p/non-money-referrals https://tips.ariyh.com/p/non-money-referrals
mojuba 4y ago
I was one of the early adopters. Monzo felt fresh and exciting back when it started, kind of like Google in its early days. But I later switched to Revolut and never looked back. I was driven purely by intuition and no particular reason. While trying to understand why, I thought it was probably because there was too much PR and fuzz around Monzo as an "ethical business" and little action. You don't just talk about being ethical or caring about the customers (most data collection companies say "we value your privacy"). You prove it by doing, by delivering an amazing product and customer support, and by showing how you are going to turn profitable. Revolut and other competitors talk less but you can see they are doing reasonable job on all fronts.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  I wouldn't consider Revolut ethical though. Revolut allowed people to open accounts immediately with no (or very soft) KYC but then had to limit (by law) the amount of money they could transact before passing stronger KYC. This led to a lot of people opening Revolut accounts, going abroad and ending up stranded with no access to their money once they've exhausted the initial limit, sometimes with no way to complete KYC at all if they didn't have the required documents on hand. The ethical approach here would've been to prevent these people from opening accounts without initial full KYC or have strong & persistent warnings about the issue to dissuade people from going abroad with a limited account, but who cares about people being stranded if you can have "growth" instead?
  - mojuba 4y ago
    That's strange, I've used Revolut as my main account for years and never hit any limits. I suppose there's ATM withdrawal cap but I don't use cash much.
  - jozvolskyef 4y ago
    See my sibling comment for a counterargument. I do agree with the warnings though.
- shantnutiwari 4y ago
  I gave up on Revolut after scandals about its CEO and financial shenanigans; and the many customer service nightmares. In banking, boring is better
robertlagrant 4y ago
> First, a note about the context. We started the company in the UK in February 2015, when “digital banks” weren’t yet a popular idea. BankSimple had launched in 2012 with some big plans, but sold to BBVA in early 2014 with about 100,000 accounts, having struggled to raise sufficient funding to continue. N26 started development in late 2013, initially as a card for kids, while Revolut was founded a few months after Monzo, in April 2015. Is it odd that the author, along with the rest of the founders, came from Starling Bank[1], a UK digital bank founded in 2014, and yet Starling Bank isn't mentioned? Slightly less obvious, but still important, is the UK's first internet bank, Egg, was founded in 1998! [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monzo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monzo [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_Banking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_Banking
- oakesm9 4y ago
  Before starting Monzo they attempted a hostile takeover of Starling but we’re rebuffed by the founder. Tom took basically all The staff and started Monzo, so I can imagine he doesn’t want to draw too much attention to it. Anne Boden’s book is worth reading if your interested in the early history of digital first banks in the UK https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51007680 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51007680
  - ralferoo 4y ago
    The irony is that Starling is consistently the better bank, from my perspective. I started off getting Monzo when it advertised itself as a pre-paid debit card and it's big selling point was free foreign ATM transactions. I never actually used it all that much (I've been with them about 5-6 years, and maybe done about £1000 total foreign withdrawals). At some point when they introduced limits, there was a post on their forum comparing them to Starling, Revolut and N26 and others. N26 was a bit of a hassle, but I got the other two just in case I needed more than the £200 a month you were now allowed. Since then, the service at Monzo has steadily declined, as they decide to start charging fees for this that or the other than used to be free, adding more and more junk dressed up to look pretty, but every month or so the service gets degraded a little more somehow. An extra charge here. A restriction there. More in-app advertising for services I don't want, etc. And yet throughout that, Starling has continued to do everything you'd expect from a bank, and with the convenience of an online bank. Their app hasn't really changed at all in that time, and yet somehow it's still better than Monzo's. Simpler, sure, but certainly less annoying. It's telling that I've never felt comfortable trusting Monzo with my salary, because it always feels like it'll fold any moment, so I've always had my salary paid into a "real bank" and just have a standing order each month to transfer £500 a month for monthly expenditure, but pay most bills directly from the old brick and mortar bank. I needed to keep that old account around anyway, because Monzo makes life impossible if you need occasionally to use cheques. And so, when I started a company and needed to choose a bank for my business account, it was a no brainer - Starling.
lysergia 4y ago
I downloaded Monzo on the Play store and installed it. During registration it asked for personal data like my address etc then proceeded to tell me it’s a UK only app. I was shocked. I’m in the EEA and thought I could use the app. It should be clear in the app’s description that it’s a UK only affair. I imagine this has happened to many more people other than me.
- surfer7837 4y ago
  Kind of hard to determine if you're a UK tax resident without some details, no?
  - lysergia 4y ago
    There’s no mention of it being a strictly UK affair in the app description. I imagine 100s of people download it each day, fill in the form and then bail once they realize it’s UK only.
    - ralphmelish 4y ago
      I've just checked the description in the Play Store and it says 'Open a full UK bank account'. Maybe that is new, but it is pretty clear.
      - berdario 4y ago
        That doesn't mean that it's closed to non-residents.
        nsteel 4y ago
        Don't all UK banks require a UK address?
        Nextgrid 4y ago
        But that's not something you'd expect a non-resident to know. Making account opening criteria transparent wouldn't hurt anything and would save everyone time.
finsubthrowaway 4y ago
Not the intended use case, but the monzo.me links are great for financial domination too. As a cash slave, it makes it very easy to send to UK-based cash masters from outside the UK.

97 points by angristan 4y ago

substation13 4y ago

How do they make money?

chrisseaton 4y ago
Interest on loaning your current account balance out.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sksksk 4y ago
- Interchange fees (Monzo take ~1% of every card transaction) - Packaged account fees (Monzo Plus, Premium and business Pro) - Lending (Overdrafts, Personal Loans, Credit Card) - Interest on bank deposits
- blibble 4y ago
  they also charge you to take your own money out and put your own money in(!!!) Cash withdrawal in pounds in the UK: First £250 in a rolling 30-day period free, 3% after that Cash deposit: £1 per deposit to pay in cash at any PayPoint source: https://monzo.com/legal/fee-information/ https://monzo.com/legal/fee-information/
  - 55555 4y ago
    What the heck?
  - willyt 4y ago
    I was surprised by this and it turns out its a bit of a misrepresentation as you get unlimited fee free withdrawals if you meet one of these criteria which, in the UK, pretty much anyone except a teenager with no job will meet: At least £500 was paid into a Monzo account in your name over the last rolling 35-day period, and you have at least one active Direct Debit on the same account in the same period. You’ve received a Department of Work and Pensions or a Department for Communities’ payment into a Monzo account in your name over the last rolling 35-day period. You’ve received a student loan payment into a Monzo account in your name over the last rolling 8-month period. You’re sharing a Monzo Joint Account with someone who has done at least one of the above.
    - blibble 4y ago
      it's not misleading, it's true if you lose your job, you're now being charged 3% to pull your own money out (and regardless: they still charge you to deposit your own money, unheard of for retail customers)
      - ascorbic 4y ago
        The criteria seem to be mostly designed to ensure that people who aren't using it as their main account can't do things that cost Monzo lots of money. That said, if you want to deal mostly with cash then Monzo probably isn't for you, and I think they're ok with that.
danpalmer 4y ago
The short answer is that they don't really. UK retail banking is notoriously low margin, and all of the major banks struggle to make anything from their consumer businesses. Charging for bank accounts is not something the UK market accepts. They'll likely cover costs in the long term, and their business banking will probably do fine, but I suspect the valuations aren't justified. The main way that the major players make money is through things like mortgages, wealth management for the very wealthy, and through their investment banking arms. Starling is another startup bank, a main competitor to Monzo. While they're decidedly less "cool", they seem to have targeted business banking much more, and I suspect that's why they're now in a better position. Monzo went big on Monzo Plus and even on its ~3rd? iteration, it seems to have had a lacklustre reception. I'm Monzo user #13, about as onboard with the idea as I could be, and I find it unconvincing. Monzo have just launched Monzo Flex, an easy payment system like AfterPay/ClearPay/Klarna. I'd normally expect that to do well but it's about 2 years too late and going into a recession is probably not the right time. Hopefully it'll do well as we come out.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Starling makes money from business accounts (they pocket the interest on those, and that interest amounts to more considering business accounts keep a larger balance) and I believe also provides services to other payment companies, essentially SaaS-ing their tech. It's a shame because this is something that Monzo could've done just as well and there's absolutely a place (well, was - that's now taken by Starling) in the market for it. Natwest still charges extra for a "next-gen" business account that allows multi-user access to a web UI, and I bet it's terrible - this is something a company can Monzo could've built in days based on their existing modern tech at a time where there was nothing like it in the market.
  - danpalmer 4y ago
    Monzo do have good tech, but I've also heard that there is a "surprising amount of legacy tech" there as well. I'd interpret that as either they do too many re-writes of things, and/or they're perhaps not building at the level of quality that they should have been. They have some excellent engineers in the early team, but I've also seen a lot of very inexperienced people go there, so that in combination with a "move fast" mentality, will likely result in a lot of codebase issues and churn. Starling seem to have taken a "slow and steady wins the race" sort of approach, and had a bunch of experienced engineers build a boring old Java app. Nothing special but I'm not surprised that it is working out ok in the long run.

Nextgrid 4y ago

Good old Monzo times. Sadly, in my opinion the company took on too much investment and was now bound to deliver tech-company returns with a product that fundamentally isn't compatible with them. This led them to become yet another bullshit "growth & engagement" operation and ultimately killed the appeal of the product, all while competitors such as Starling Bank stepped up their game and delivered a very similar product that is not only profitable but doesn't have those "growth & engagement" vibes because they didn't have the same pressure and could afford to take things slow.

klelatti 4y ago
A bit ironic given Tom literally worked for Starling at the beginning. A bit odd that this doesn’t get a mention.
- blibble 4y ago
  yeah, as far as I'm aware the only reason Monzo exists is because of a falling out between Tom and the Starling CEO I don't know what really went on, but Starling's side was reported in the UK press: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/starling-bank-boss-anne-boden-how-monzos-tom-blomfield-tried-to-oust-me-306xdc0nl https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/starling-bank-boss-anne-b...
  - fumblebee 4y ago
    Steven Bartlett has a really insightful with Tom Blomfield about this [1], and then also with Starling CEO Anne Boden [2]. While I'm generally not a great fan of his podcast, these two I found to be fascinating. [1] https://podcasts.apple.com/dk/podcast/e86-monzo-ceo-on-death-threats-depression-digital-banking/id1291423644?i=1000527067065 https://podcasts.apple.com/dk/podcast/e86-monzo-ceo-on-death... [2] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e107-starling-bank-building-a-%241-5-billion-business/id1291423644?i=1000542673404 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e107-starling-bank-bui...
    - klelatti 4y ago

rand49an 4y ago

Sadly closed my Monzo account down recently after applying for a joint account with my partner and being denied with no explanation (both long term users, good credit etc). Apparently a common story. Opened a Starling account and got one straight away. It's a shame because the Monzo user interface is miles better.

3adawi 4y ago
I have this same issue - really weird - I have a joint account already with someone on my Starling and can't start a second one, anyone know another alternative I could use for a joint account?
srmarm 4y ago
This mirrors my experience a couple of weeks back. Having come across many others with the same problem I almost wondered if it was a case of pretend to have a feature to gauge interest (I'm sure it wasn't - I hate those things!) I also ended up using starling instead - perfect really. While I like the Monzo travel bits when travelling I find bank accounts much of a muchness really for my basic needs so don't have any real loyalty.
- arranf 4y ago
  For what it's worth I've had a joint account for years. It works fine but there are some wrinkles - mainly that it's not a first class citizen. Split the bill and other Monzo specific features only work with your individual account.
varispeed 4y ago
Starling is no better, you were just lucky. I found Starling customer service appalling. Basically "go somewhere else if you don't like it".
- dazc 4y ago
  I have a monzo personal and business account and I haven't had any major issues. As a former Barclays customer, they'd have to be fairly terrible to be any worse though. I did try an open a Starling account once but they claimed my phone number was already linked to an existing account, which I found strange and wasn't prepared to jump through the hoops required to prove otherwise.

varispeed 4y ago

[flagged]

jtwigg 4y ago

Earlier this year my partner and I switched our joint account from Monzo to Starling simply because we both hated using the Monzo app. Navigating the app feels unnatural to us and probably due to how infrequently we use it, we never learnt to live with it. Last week I finally closed my personal Monzo account as I only used it for one small DD a month and much prefer the Starling and NatWest apps.

Cxckers 4y ago
I made the same switch due to Monzo refusing me and my partner a joint account. Starling had no issue with giving us one
varispeed 4y ago
I have used Starling app and I couldn't make sense of statements. I think it's equally bad as Monzo. Also I kind of despise the idea that you have to have an app to access the account. After trying these "challenger" banks I am staying with my good old High Street bank where I can access my account from the web and it does not have any confusing bells and whistles.
- kieloo 4y ago
  I don’t know about Monzo but you can access your Starling account on the web.
  - dazc 4y ago
    You can access a monzo business account on the web to access statements and such. I believe they also have an emergency web access feature for personal accounts. https://monzo.com/blog/2018/06/13/how-to-get-online-in-an-emergency https://monzo.com/blog/2018/06/13/how-to-get-online-in-an-em...
    - varispeed 4y ago
      Monzo business account is very much useless as it isn't connected to SWIFT.

deeptote 4y ago

Given Monzo's hiring practices, I'm not sanguine about the future of this company. I myself went through their interview process not long ago and to say it lived up to the sentiment of the glassdoor reviews is putting it mildly. Several rounds, silly armchair-psychologist behavioral questions, and the interviewers made it blatant that they didn't want to be there. Did my last interview at 4pm one day, got rejected by 8am next business day. I've gotten offers from Google, Amazon, etc so I know I interview well, not sure what happened there but really got the vibe that their employees are never quite sure if they're doing well, and management likes it that way. They're a bank struggling to market themselves as a tech company.

chrisseaton 4y ago
I’d you have offers from Google and Amazon then why are you interviewing at a place like Monzo? They can probably tell you’re both wasting your time so rejected you on that.
- sonthonax 4y ago
  Because Monzo will pay more than Google or Amazon in the UK.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    I didn't think anyone paid more than Google?
    - nly 4y ago
      Facebook pay better than Google in London from what I've heard.
  - shrikant 4y ago
    This hasn't been the case in my experience interviewing at all of those three -- both Google and Amazon's comp for a similar role and level at Monzo were way higher. Edit: to clarify, I didn't actually end up interviewing at Monzo because the recruiter said no pretty much right away on hearing my salary ask.

mojuba 4y ago

On a general note, referral rewards are not necessarily a good thing i.e. when you say "invite a friend and get $X". Turns out non-money rewards work better. A quote from [1]: > When money comes into play it switches us from ‘social mode’ to ‘business transaction mode’. We become more selfish, distant, less helpful, and less willing to be helped. You don't even need research to back this, it seems obvious when you think about it. [1] https://tips.ariyh.com/p/non-money-referrals https://tips.ariyh.com/p/non-money-referrals

mojuba 4y ago

I was one of the early adopters. Monzo felt fresh and exciting back when it started, kind of like Google in its early days. But I later switched to Revolut and never looked back. I was driven purely by intuition and no particular reason. While trying to understand why, I thought it was probably because there was too much PR and fuzz around Monzo as an "ethical business" and little action. You don't just talk about being ethical or caring about the customers (most data collection companies say "we value your privacy"). You prove it by doing, by delivering an amazing product and customer support, and by showing how you are going to turn profitable. Revolut and other competitors talk less but you can see they are doing reasonable job on all fronts.

Nextgrid 4y ago
I wouldn't consider Revolut ethical though. Revolut allowed people to open accounts immediately with no (or very soft) KYC but then had to limit (by law) the amount of money they could transact before passing stronger KYC. This led to a lot of people opening Revolut accounts, going abroad and ending up stranded with no access to their money once they've exhausted the initial limit, sometimes with no way to complete KYC at all if they didn't have the required documents on hand. The ethical approach here would've been to prevent these people from opening accounts without initial full KYC or have strong & persistent warnings about the issue to dissuade people from going abroad with a limited account, but who cares about people being stranded if you can have "growth" instead?
- mojuba 4y ago
  That's strange, I've used Revolut as my main account for years and never hit any limits. I suppose there's ATM withdrawal cap but I don't use cash much.
- jozvolskyef 4y ago
  See my sibling comment for a counterargument. I do agree with the warnings though.
shantnutiwari 4y ago
I gave up on Revolut after scandals about its CEO and financial shenanigans; and the many customer service nightmares. In banking, boring is better

robertlagrant 4y ago

> First, a note about the context. We started the company in the UK in February 2015, when “digital banks” weren’t yet a popular idea. BankSimple had launched in 2012 with some big plans, but sold to BBVA in early 2014 with about 100,000 accounts, having struggled to raise sufficient funding to continue. N26 started development in late 2013, initially as a card for kids, while Revolut was founded a few months after Monzo, in April 2015. Is it odd that the author, along with the rest of the founders, came from Starling Bank[1], a UK digital bank founded in 2014, and yet Starling Bank isn't mentioned? Slightly less obvious, but still important, is the UK's first internet bank, Egg, was founded in 1998! [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monzo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monzo [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_Banking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_Banking

oakesm9 4y ago
Before starting Monzo they attempted a hostile takeover of Starling but we’re rebuffed by the founder. Tom took basically all The staff and started Monzo, so I can imagine he doesn’t want to draw too much attention to it. Anne Boden’s book is worth reading if your interested in the early history of digital first banks in the UK https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51007680 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51007680
- ralferoo 4y ago
  The irony is that Starling is consistently the better bank, from my perspective. I started off getting Monzo when it advertised itself as a pre-paid debit card and it's big selling point was free foreign ATM transactions. I never actually used it all that much (I've been with them about 5-6 years, and maybe done about £1000 total foreign withdrawals). At some point when they introduced limits, there was a post on their forum comparing them to Starling, Revolut and N26 and others. N26 was a bit of a hassle, but I got the other two just in case I needed more than the £200 a month you were now allowed. Since then, the service at Monzo has steadily declined, as they decide to start charging fees for this that or the other than used to be free, adding more and more junk dressed up to look pretty, but every month or so the service gets degraded a little more somehow. An extra charge here. A restriction there. More in-app advertising for services I don't want, etc. And yet throughout that, Starling has continued to do everything you'd expect from a bank, and with the convenience of an online bank. Their app hasn't really changed at all in that time, and yet somehow it's still better than Monzo's. Simpler, sure, but certainly less annoying. It's telling that I've never felt comfortable trusting Monzo with my salary, because it always feels like it'll fold any moment, so I've always had my salary paid into a "real bank" and just have a standing order each month to transfer £500 a month for monthly expenditure, but pay most bills directly from the old brick and mortar bank. I needed to keep that old account around anyway, because Monzo makes life impossible if you need occasionally to use cheques. And so, when I started a company and needed to choose a bank for my business account, it was a no brainer - Starling.

lysergia 4y ago

I downloaded Monzo on the Play store and installed it. During registration it asked for personal data like my address etc then proceeded to tell me it’s a UK only app. I was shocked. I’m in the EEA and thought I could use the app. It should be clear in the app’s description that it’s a UK only affair. I imagine this has happened to many more people other than me.

surfer7837 4y ago
Kind of hard to determine if you're a UK tax resident without some details, no?
- lysergia 4y ago
  There’s no mention of it being a strictly UK affair in the app description. I imagine 100s of people download it each day, fill in the form and then bail once they realize it’s UK only.
  - ralphmelish 4y ago
    I've just checked the description in the Play Store and it says 'Open a full UK bank account'. Maybe that is new, but it is pretty clear.
    - berdario 4y ago
      That doesn't mean that it's closed to non-residents.
      - nsteel 4y ago
        Don't all UK banks require a UK address?
        Nextgrid 4y ago
        But that's not something you'd expect a non-resident to know. Making account opening criteria transparent wouldn't hurt anything and would save everyone time.

finsubthrowaway 4y ago

Not the intended use case, but the monzo.me links are great for financial domination too. As a cash slave, it makes it very easy to send to UK-based cash masters from outside the UK.