Ok - here’s my response.
First, the lack of civility in this discussion has been disappointing. I think my colleagues have exhibited a huge amount of patience, but it’s getting to the point where we’re thinking about closing the thread.
Second, handling cash is expensive. You may recall the debate about foreign ATM fees - we initially didn’t charge anything for this (extremely costly) service, but a small number heavy cash users drove a disproportionate and unsustainable amount of cost. Heavy users were withdrawing 10 or 20x the average amount. Reluctantly, we had to introduce fees.
We don’t want to have a repeat of that situation where we roll out a feature and then have to retrospectively add charges because of a small number of users. So we’re applying a fee that will cover the cost from day one. This is not a profit-making exercise. If we can reduce the fee over time, we will.
I do think the deposit limits are probably too low and we’ll aim to increase them after launch.
I’m afraid I don’t believe that access to cash is some basic human right that Monzo is obliged to provide for free. Monzo offers a current account with dramatically lower charges than any high-street bank, and the only way we can do that is by keeping our costs as low as possible. That’s also why we don’t have hundreds of branches - they’re really expensive to run.