Big few weeks coming up for Monzo - guesses?

Oh nothing like a name change. But either rehabilitating the :mondo: (or jetting it completely) would be likely if this were on the cards (but like you say it’s very unlikely).

No, it’s unlikely they’ll announce it here. Check their social media or even new posts on the community…

Hoping it’s not America launch, way too many half-baked features here for an expansion to be wise at this time.


I think it will be a tough market, but if they pull it off (and I have confidence they will), this is huge.

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Another pre-report of a US launch;

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It is, basically the same as saying “launching in Europe”, they have different laws at state level, culture and a massive land. From what we know the banking system there is even more broken than the one we had here pre-Monzo, I feel positive about this.
It’s not going to be easy but we know Monzo, they are going to work their socks off to make this work. :raised_hands:

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Exciting stuff. I’m guessing it’ll be a relatively barebones roll out of the app with a waiting list though.

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Be interesting to see if they go solo or partner with a US bank

I think they’ve said they are partnering or “piggybacking” for the US Licence at first.

coral pink debit card - :thinking::thinking::thinking:

Yes the big question for me is are they going to be a real bank account (requires partner?), or are they going to issue prepaid cards. Hopefully they won’t have to go back to prepaid cards in the US. Does anyone know what that plans are there?

I think I saw a Tech Crunch article that suggested it would roll-out a Monzo ‘lite’ which will be a pre-paid and gear up the same way it did in the UK - tbh it makes the most sense to me, if it worked before, why change it up?

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Different market - might be worth doing things different

A dangerous assumption to make is what worked in the UK will work in the US

(Not saying you made it, just stating a fact)

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Well it will probably make their systems a lot more complex as they’ll have to handle real accounts and prepaid in parallel, mean they have to deal with criticisms that ‘it’s not a real bank’, deal with the lingering suspicion caused by people misusing prepaid cards for fraud, deal with acceptance issues, and finally after all that go through all the pain of a transition to real bank accounts and all the churn and confusion that goes with it.

But I’m sure they’ll deal with any bumps in the road and they must have good reasons, it’s not at all easy to get a banking license in the US apparently.

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I didn’t suggest or assume it would work - just saying that they know how to roll-out something like that, build up a cult following who don’t feel obliged to “risk it all” by switching straight over to Monzo - let the trust and product build up reputation and then release as a fully fledged bank.

To me that makes the most sense.

They’ll be running UK vs US accounts in parallel so I don’t think having a “lite” version of that is actually a bad thing.

Monzo are a real bank now in the UK and people (as well as publications/ newspapers) still think it isn’t a real bank so :man_shrugging:t2:

Just look on the forum - Monzo still have that now! Majority of complaints and poor reviews are down to account closures and acceptance issues.

I don’t think the previous transition caused Monzo any pain - they did ridiculously well and if you look at the numbers (saw it in a graph somewhere in the 2 million thread I think) they in fact boomed after transition.

To me launching full scale and full whack in the US where you are unproven, unknown and the new kid on the block feels foolish - why not take a more calculated, scalable and targeted roll-out and build like they have already done.

But reports on here are going to get interesting:

[UK][Android][Beta][NewNav]

QED

We don’t know what they’re doing yet, but there are significant problems with prepaid too. Certainly less challenging than getting a banking licence over there and doesn’t have the disadvantages of using a partner bank either so understandable if they take that route, but there are definitely downsides which will haunt them for some time if they do.

Also a dangerous assumption to make that as they are a full bank in the UK they can just bounce in fully formed to the US :wink:

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Just unearthed this little post from back in Feb 18:

Could be looking at a release into Ireland as well?

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