My other half has recently joined Monzo. She is pleased with everything so far but she said that she read some bad reviews. I personally hadn’t seen any and asked her what she meant. On Facebook there are some bad reviews. I have to say there is a trend to most of these reviews. I noticed they are mainly from what appears to be foreign sounding names. This got me thinking about things I’ve seen on the community and in particular posts from people claiming Monzo are scammers and that their accounts have been frozen, can’t access money etc etc and I noticed those also appear to be posters with foreign names.
Has anyone else noticed this? I’m convinced this is a coordinated attempt by foreign trolls to damage the Monzo brand. Thoughts?
(I know some people can’t handle discussions that refer to those of a different ethnicity. This is not a discussion about ethnicity nor am I bashing anyone before people start ranting. Sensible discussion please)
Cheers!! Some of the stuff I’ve read is clearly nonsense. I used to work in financial crime and know full well that accounts aren’t just frozen for the sake of it.
They could be automated from fake accounts. Monzobots
It’s also more likely that someone from outside the UK will have an issue in setting up a bank account here. I work with international students and it’s always the most frustrating part of their move to the UK.
Monzo really should contact student unions and get reps to international welcome weeks - you’d get a very good proportion of the thousands of international students in the UK!
Anarchist
(Press ‘Help’ search ‘Contact us’ or email help@monzo.com or call 0800 802 1281)
6
I think that this is unlikely.
I can think of two more likely explanations.
People with foreign sounding names may be more likely to receive funds from people with names which are “red flagged” (correctly or incorrectly) for AML reasons.
They may also be innocently (or not) caught up in a money laundering scam.
Must admit it is these reviews that’s holding me back a little.
I pay myself large sums monthly from my business account and if I get flagged for it I’ve got a big problem. No access, No branches and no real contacts for a swift response.
So you trust Monzo enough to invest in them, but not enough to use them as a bank account?
Frankly I suspect Monzo have no interest in how large the sums of money are that you pay yourself, but bravo for shoe-horning that in. The only concern I imagine Monzo would have is if the source of the funds is flagged as dodgy, or if you are otherwise flagged as having financial behaviour indicating dodginess.
If you feel your legitimate business transactions would be flagged as such, then stick with a high street bank. I mean, if they had the same concerns about your financial arrangements they’d also be unable to speak to you about it, but at least you can be ignored in a branch.
I’d imagine how large a transfer is would be of very high interest to the fraud team of a bank.
I imagine Monzo has software which flags payments above a certain amount since a payment of £20,000 is far more likely to be laundered money than a payment of £20.
Yes, of course the source of funds would matter. However, the size of a transaction also matters.
Every bank makes these kinds of decisions. It’s the law… they have to.
Either Monzo are somewhat better at fraud detection or more people are thinking they can get away with it because it’s a ‘new’ bank - I suspect a mixture of the two.
If you’re just transferring money around legitimately then you’ll be fine.
It’d be irresponsible, and damaging for anyone here to discuss how such algorithms actually work, but what I can say is that a huge, huge amount of work is done to stop false positives.
There really is very little cause for concern on any individual level, unless you are, in fact, involved in financial crime
Certainly nobody should be worried about using our app because of anything you might read from anonymous folks somewhere on the internet.
Do you have any evidence to support your argument? From what I see Monzos growth is still really healthy so it would indicate that these reviews are having little or no effect.
My other half was concerned by negative reviews too. It was my gentle persuasion and disproportionate excitement of things like shared tabs and split bills that convinced her
In all seriousness though I do think negative reviews will be having some impact. Just because growth numbers are good doesn’t mean there is no impact.
As an international student I can vouch for this. The ease of using Monzo and splitting payments makes it a pretty big thing among new students, though - and it’s catching on!
Reviews are like a storm, they come and go. Every company in the world has bad reviews, if everyone listened and took heart what they said! Nobody would join anything. Nobody leaves Amazing, fantastic reviews do they? Make the decision like a adult and remember “critics add no value in life”
