There’s something Fyre Fest about all of this.
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So, who’s actually left now in the ‘Fintech Challenge Bank’ sector? Is Revolut a full bank account (for example could I get my salary paid into it and pay all my bills and direct debits out of it?) Or Monese?
Are Monzo and Starling now sufficiently well establish to have ‘moved out’ of this group now and are now considered mainstream?
Have we moved on to a ‘Post Challenge Bank’ period and if you’re not already established, you’re very unlikely to succeed? So, we probably wont see any new challengers setting up now?
Feel sorry for the team from Loot, but makes sense to concentrate on innovation in the SME sector. Really feels like Starling, Monzo, Monese and Revolut have taken first-mover advantage and have widened the gap in tech between fintech and high street. People talk of Barclays having a good tech setup but I can’t see it, just feels like lipstick on a pig, and not even great lipstick at that. Bó tech will be rolled into Mettle, and Bó customers will just be dumped as Mettle is for SMEs only. In time that tech will be rolled into the NatWest/RBS brand anyway. The new Chief Exec has taken a very different approach with the ‘bank of brands’ and seems to be consolidating most things into the NatWest brand, with Royal Bank remaining north of the border.
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Will it show as a closed account on a credit report?
I got Bó as soon it was in public beta , I didn’t even activate the card.
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No. Bó doesn’t show on Credit Reports.
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I imagine they have learned a lot from this exercise – it may even have successfully served the purpose it was intended to. The Natwest app was fine but stagnant for a long time, and there’s been a glut of new features recently, including spending breakdowns.
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Aren’t Bo and Mettle based on Starling systems though?
The chance to garner better systems would be minimal.
Surprised they didn’t even mention mettle in the email…
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Good point with Barclays. Got a mate who works in the tech division for them. They’ve spent the last 2 years working on a project to show people their salary before it gets paid in… They’re no closer to working out how to do it.
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Mettle is a business account so not relevant to personal account holders
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That’s what’s not clear at the moment though. The PR from RBS on this talks about ‘merging Bo with Mettle’.
Does that mean they’ll be expanding Mettle into a Consumer product for personal accounts as well? Or just lifting and shifting any interesting tech and services that was developed at Bo over to Mettle for their existing SME business accounts?
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No, I think what it is saying is that (some) of the Bo tech will be rolled into Mettle. They are closing (not transferring) the Bo accounts, which would seem to indicate that they do not want or need the few (non-business) customers Bo has acquired.
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I think the latter, reading above. They would be transferring rather than closing if it was the former.
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Re-read the Yahoo! article. It’s clear Mettle is for business accounts.
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I suspect it’s very few customers, and if the rumours about them hardly using the account are true, then it’s likely they don’t even want them as they aren’t profitable.
Certainly not worth bothering to code a migration for, and they probably don’t want to sink Mettle by trying to merge it with Bó. It’s it’s own proposition.
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They are trying to put a positive spin on things with this talk of merging, nothing more.
They’ve also tried to bury the news by announcing it on a Friday.
Classic PR damage limitation 101.
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I only stopped using mine because of the lockdown, but was only using it lightly up till now.
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I doubt anyone actually used it as their primary spending account. It was just far too lacking in features compared to competitors.
No biometric login, and no mobile payments were two dealbreakers really.
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Revolut is not a bank, at least not in the UK.
But it seems that becoming one is on their radar.
I suspect that the total amount of people in the UK across Monzo, Starling and Revolut combined who use one as their primary account, with their salary and direct debits, is probably less than 4 million total.
So there’s still everything to play for.
I’m obviously biased, but having used Monzo as my main account for well over a year now, I think it has the best feature set for achieving high market penetration here.
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