A big thank you from Monzo on our 3rd birthday!

Community & Events
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Hello everyone :wave:

As we celebrate our third birthday, we’re taking some time to reflect on how we got here. And we wanted to send a heartfelt thanks to you, the Monzo Community!

Community is at the heart of what we’re about at Monzo. You’re the hot to our coral. We can’t build the best bank in the world on our own, so we’ll always be grateful to everyone who helped us get there. From our earliest Monzonauts, to those who only got their card last week. We want to send you a massive thank you!

Here’s a look back over some of our top community moments:

Alpha Testers (Early Monzo Hackathons)

Believe it or not, but we didn’t always have half a million users. Things started small with just a few diehard fans willing to try out a bright pink card with a funny name.

The feedback from our earliest Alpha members helped shape Monzo (then “Mondo”) into what it is today. And we honour these members with a special badge in the app.

The name change

Speaking of names, there was the time we had to change our name. More than 10,000 of you sent us over 12,000 suggestions before we eventually settled on Monzo, which had been suggested by six people.

ATM fees vote

This is a great example of the power of our community. As a company, we were faced with a problem: withdrawing money from an ATM abroad is expensive, and we couldn’t continue to just absorb that cost. So we turned to the community and put it to a vote.

6,000 votes and 1,500 comments later we had an answer. We loved that we could be transparent with our community every step of the way, and include our customers within the decision-making process.

The t-shirt design contest

We’ve also harnessed the creativity of our community over the years, like when we held a t-shirt competition last year. The entries we got were really impressive and are being worn with pride by Monzo fans across the country.

Both crowdfunding rounds

And special thanks to all our community investors. Our record-breaking £22m funding round last year absolutely blew us away. We really can’t say how thankful we are for everyone who supported us this way - you’re the best :heart_eyes:

Looking to the future…

We’re sure the Monzo community will keep growing and getting stronger and stronger. We’ve got some big things coming in 2018 and we want you to be right there with us.

So, as always, keep your posts coming. Your feedback, thoughts, and ideas (yes, even the complaints) go right into helping us build the bank of the future.

Thank you! And join us in celebrating three happy years of Monzo :tada:

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When I first came around here, I noticed that. Why did you have to change your name?

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it was alleged that Mondo was too similar to another company name so Mondo renamed themselves Monzo, which then caused problems for Monizo who then had to change their name because Monzo was too similar to Monizo. They rebranded as Coconut.

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Which company name?

Wait, did they come first? That hardly seems fair if they came first.

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Coconut was in existance first as Monizo before Mondo changed their name.

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Pretty sure Monizo were already rebranding to Coconut, as they congratulated Monzo on the name change at the time.

Correction: Ignore above. I am wrong. Tweets at the time from Monizo include “well this is awkward” and “imitation is the greatest form of flattery”.

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What was this other company?

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The T-shirts ever make it to sale? Or was it for giveaways only?

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Mondo/Monzo chose not to say who the other company was so I think it is inappropriate for me to say. A staff member is free to post it if they wish.

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They were given out at community meet-ups, I believe.

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I didn’t realise mentioning the other Mondo would be verboten. I know when I first heard of Mondo/Monzo I wasn’t at all surprised they had to change their name because I already knew of an incredibly popular company called Mondo - indeed, one of the early parts of the conversation was my Mondo-using friends assuring a confused me that it was not the same Mondo I already knew of.

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Happy 3rd birthday! Thanks for everything :birthday:

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Who were they then?

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Of course it was not the only legal issue. Simple issued Mondo a Cease And Desist over use of “Safe To Spend” Trademark. But rather than look back at the past three years and the trademark issues and the ATM charges débâcle, lets look to the future and planned launches in Éire and the USA.

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Allegedly it was Monedo -

The name change came after a copyright dispute with another company, Blomfield said in an interview, declining to identify the firm. That company, according to two people familiar with the matter, was German digital lender Monedo, a unit of Hamburg-based Kreditech Holding SSL GmbH, which is backed by billionaire Peter Thiel and New York-based private equity firm JC Flowers & Co. A spokeswoman for Monedo said she could neither confirm nor deny whether it challenged Blomfield.

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If alexs is right, it wasn’t the fault of the one I was thinking of. But the one I was thinking of were a company called Mondo who create limited edition screen printed posters for films and comics. Some of the posters they produce are phenomenal, if a bit rich for my blood. And the ones I would spring for - this one for DRIVE, for example - sell out in what feels like seconds :scream:

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Ah Mr Thiel. Always a love :heart:

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