The Tiny Challenger Bank is the only other bank that I know of that does this.
As for why, that’s a good question. It’s almost as if they know they’re not going to be someone’s main current account and they have no real aspiration or expectation that they could be.
You do have this way of shining the worst possible light on things! 
Devil’s advocate, old chap.
And @pipefish makes an extremely valid point. Who wants this top-up function? … those who don’t use Monzo as their primary current account, from what I can see, as the function is redundant really.
I don’t, if I I need to transfer money I make a bank transfer using Metrobank app
Open App
Select Payments
Choose Payee
Type Amount
Make Payment
Simple, I don’t get the need/want for it.
It’s costly and pointless and should be charged for.
To me like has been said before it feels like it was just dumped in to make people happy as Monzo appear to be scared at the lack of conversion… this clearly is not a main account for most people.
With some other banks such as Handelsbanken UK or Fidor UK you will find it impossible to send an instant Faster Payment outside banking hours such as at the weekend, so if you want money in your Monzo account then a card topup is the only option. Also if you want to top up from abroad a SEPA payment (when they are accepted) currently take a couple of days, so a card topup is quicker (until SEPA SCT replaced by SCTinst)
Not strictly true as we never intended it to be gone long term.
Regarding conversion - we aren’t worried. There’s lots of ways we can incentivise upgrading. That said, it’s in our interests to get people to do it sooner rather than later. Ending prepaid is a priority, and avoiding operational overload in the last few weeks of the scheme once the
message changes from “you should upgrade” into “you must upgrade to continue using Monzo”.
I can see how some people might feel that, on the same topic, I’m glad of Monzo’s transparency. Compare to N26, who has shut down a bunch of customers and refused to provide explanations to them. Or Starling and their issues…
Interesting thread. As I’ve said elsewhere, I expect topups will eventually die off, once people realise it’s a current account designed for salaries. The interesting part is how quickly Monzo can catch up with Starling in terms of functionality, but with something better. Do we know how many customers Starling have?
Do we care? 
Actuall, I don’t understand this constant need to compare the two it’s all getting rather repetitive reading at the moment. 
The closest we have is The Telegraph calling Starling “the tiny challenger bank, Starling”. They didn’t quantify “tiny”.
Well I’m guessing once people move from legacy to either Monzo or Starling, they won’t move between the two, so it would be interesting to know how much traction they are getting, yes.
Back in 2016, My only reason/motivation to sign up as beta tester was/is - Monzo is buiding a modern bank!
_So I was expecting everything traditional banks offer plus Monzo’s forward thinking/transparency. Of course, no one can survive on a FEE-FREE Model and from sustainability point of view, it’s important that we continue supporting Monzo and its future endeavours. 
:mondo:
This all seems normal to me - all these tech businesses do this - they do the usual ‘this is how we are different’ when they are ramping but at some point investors want a ROI.
Just work on the basis that you take what you can get today and place no trust in future facing premises.
Its ranked higher than Monzo in the Apple store if that means anything 
Not really coz people download just see what it is like then maybe just delete.
They have not release any actual figures like Monzo
That applies to any app. So…
Yep, there’s a lot of cr apps on the iOS and Google Play stores.
£71m / 450,000 = £157.77
B (Clydesdale/Yorkshire) went with £250
TSB has gone with £130 + £70 by June 2018
HSBC just did a £200 offer
What ways does Monzo plan on incentivising customers? I’d be surprised if you went for bribery legacy bank marketing like those examples above.
Just how engaged are customers? Of the 450,000, can you tell how often the app is opened and used? What proportion of those are dormant after people’s summer holidays, for example?
I’m currently taking advantage of some of these
I think you bring up some important points. I don’t think this was a deliberately evil tactic to gain users at any expense, let them get used to features and then start charging for them … but I do admit it’s not particularly good for Monzo’s image. Especially as a new bank with a limited history for customers to judge them on.
This is also an area where the transparency starts to bite a bit. Any other organisation would just introduce the fees (probably with no consultation) with a little notice and call it a day. With Monzo, whilst I appreciate the posts from staff explaining the costs and the problem my worry is that some may interpret this as Monzo not really having a good grasp on the business side of things. After all, “they should’ve predicted the costs from the start and instead of just fixing it they’re now asking the customers how to run the business and recoup costs”.
I still love Monzo and I’m optimistic for the future - they’ve achieved some great things this year and they’re infinitely better than the legacy banks I’ve dealt with. With that said, I am disappointed at the state of the Android-iOS parity (or lack thereof) and I’d have probably predicted more progress if you’d asked me earlier on in the year where things would be by the end of 2017.