And apple pay pleaseeee 
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I am using three fintech startups, one as my current account. The first that offers Apple Pay becomes my current account for good.
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This is an interesting perspective, thanks for sharing it.
If thatâs the case, and other than the card processor we donât know that it is, then perhaps Monzo have needlessly hampered themselves.
Why bother building from scratch when existing products can do it off-the-shelf?
I suspect the real reason Monzo could be considered a bit behind their nearest competitor (and therefore have not gone through the Apple pay approvals process yet) is the work theyâve had to put in to scaling the prepaid card to work for so many users - and then move them over to the current account. Hopefully it will pay off by jump-starting their market share.
Just to add to the notes on Apple Pay. This is the number 1 missing feature for me and is actively preventing me making more use of Monzo. Contactless is everywhere and the ÂŁ30 limit is gone from most places I visit, as such 99% of my daily/weekly purchases are made with Apple Pay using my watch. Nothing is easier than doing that and my traditional bank (rbs) has supported this for many years.
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They built from scratch so they can deliver the bank of the future. They were never looking for a quick solution. They were looking for a fit for purpose solution. This stuff takes time. Apple would have been in talks with banks years before announcing Apple Pay. So they had a lot of quiet time to build necessary systems. Monzo, sadly doesnât have this luxury.
I donât know if thatâs true. Apple normally keeps the circle pretty tight to avoid leaks, I doubt given it didnât launch in the U.K. Day 1 that any U.K. banks worked with Apple for years on this.
How does the mere act of building from scratch help them build the bank of the future? If, like you assume, Starling has used existing tech then clearly it was unnecessary to do so.
Imo itâs much more likely have been the gamble they appear to have taken - spend effort getting a large number of users on to the pre-paid card to build market share vs. quietly working on current account features.
If you look at the complaints about the chat system in this forum, thatâs why.
Not necessarily. If Monzo have money to burn fill your boots but what ROI are the going to get if they build everything from scratch when off the shelf is so much cheaper in comparison?
Is Apple Pay ready yet?
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No, otherwise it would have been anounced
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Oh okay, I just assumed Monzo were waiting for someone to ask before they announced it, no-point announcing something without a hype train for it amirite?
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Almost all of Monzoâs downtime has been due to failures by their outsourced processor, hence why they built their own. This is why it is necessary for Monzo to build their Applepay integration from scratch.
That Starling continue to use an outsourced processor and have taken a short-cut to Applepay that way may have helped them get the feature to market quicker, but leaves them vulnerable to downtime they have no control over.
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Talking about some of Monzoâs features to friends has often been met with a âwow that sounds super cool!â response.
At a friends last night and one noticed I had a new smartwatch, asking if Iâd set up Apple Pay on it, with me responding with âmy bank doesnât support it yetâ
Cue shock and protest thatâs I need to GTFO. They canât believe that a smartphone based bank still doesnât support Apple Pay. Now iâm Not quite as hysterical as that but I must admit my patience is starting to run out, particularly when looking at competitors feature sets (both other challenger banks and legacy), so Iâve set myself a deadline.
No Apple Pay by the end of March and Monzo will no longer be of use to me, which would be a shame but when competitors seem to offer it so easily, why should I wait?
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I absolutely concur: my patience was low, and for Apple Pay to not even be mentioned on the 2018 roadmap has annoyed me even further - lots of the things on the list are nice to have: for me Apple Pay is critical.
I too have set a deadline, after which: Iâm off. I am bored of waiting without any response from Monzo. All the detail above about NDAs is just speculation: Iâm bored of waiting and the fact that thereâs no further update on such a key issue for many of Monzoâs users confirms my feeling that Iâm being fobbed off about this and I may as well cut my losses and go to a bank of the future which is actually implementing features which a bank of the future should have.
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This is a good list. Iâm seeing this as promises of what will come this year with slight hints that thereâs other stuff theyâre going to try and push out but theyâre not going to comment on them for various reasons etc.
Might just be me but are the timelines from January or just generally how long it takes?
For example Bank statements 3-6 weeks, is that as from today? Or just in general?
Iâm seeing it as the expected time we get to see them from the date of heh blog post.
As opposed to the Trello board which I believe is time it could take from the moment youâre viewing it.
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I suspect that Monzo realised that promising the world and not delivering was a good way to annoy people, so with this post theyâve gone for under promise and over deliver.
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