Spotted a link to this in my Twitter feed today. Thought I saw it here earlier but seems to have disappeared
This makes A LOT of sense. And this guy clearly knows what he is talking about.
The route into a full bank account from a pre-paid card, and lack of due diligence in that process, would explain why Monzo in particular has such a highāprofile problem.
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I believe itās probably been removed, as the post was quite arsey and argumentative. So wouldnāt surprise me if itās gone because of that.
At least youāve posted the article up minus what was on from the last poster 
I didnāt see that bit 
Might need Specsavers, Iāve just been though 
maybe I need a refund
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Itās more than likely that an overzealous member of cc thought that no one would notice.
I also find it curious (yet again) there is nothing to say it was moved the the āremoved postsā sin bin. I donāt want to take this offtopic but this silent deleting stuff looks very shifty
Ha! Whoever flagged this needs to get over themselves
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Interesting read and a plausible theory. Though the bit about double Tesco transactions is a bit strange, isnāt that Tesco at fault and not Monzo?
I rarely shop at Tesco but never had an issue with double transaction on Monzo.
I think we see few forum posts asking about double transactions on occasions and staff have explained it is the way Tesco process payments. Though I could be misremembering.
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Isnāt it simply a case of Tesco not completing the original pending authorisation, but putting it through afresh, leading to a seemingly double debit?
The first authorisation would eventually get re-credited to the Monzo balance, but until then itās unavailable to spend. Most other banks would āhideā this in the āAvailable balanceā?
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Iām going to go out on a limb and say heās wrong. Firstly, I dispute that our KYC was ever lacking due diligence, although I wonāt go into the details of how it worked for obvious reasons. But even if that was the case, in June 2017 there were heavier additional measures put in place to comply with EU AML regulation. At that time, the prepaid beta had some 250k accounts. Letās say that 80% of those people are still Monzo customers today, so 200k people. Thatās only 4% of the userbase. When you account for 30 day actives and you remove the people that barely use their accounts and thus donāt even have enough usage for there to be a chance of suspicious behaviour, youāre probably lower than 2%.
And from time I spent working on fincrime-adjacent tasks, Iād have to say thereās absolutely no chance in hell that even 50% of the accounts flagged were people who had been customers in the prepaid era. It was far, far less than that.
It reads like a plausible theory to an outsider. Itās not a plausible theory to me.
I firmly do not believe that Monzo closes or freezes more accounts than any other bank. What I do believe is that, as an app-based bank, these customers are far more social media savvy and far more likely to join such a group or kick up a stink on Twitter, compared to, say, somebody that got their account frozen with Barclays or HSBC.
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As always itās just another puff piece from an individual who can only stab into the dark about what the issues are.
I tend to take all these with a pinch of salt.
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For someone who claims to know the industry and Monzo, he sure does get a lot wrong.
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I obviously know no more than anyone else about this but once I got to the sentence in the article saying āI gave them plenty of opportunity to explain it to me and they didnātā or words to that effect I lost the will to read further. Without knowing anything about the guy, I felt his own self-importance got in the way of what he was trying to say which was a bit of a shame.
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Didnāt monzo complain that they didnāt have the opportunity to explain themselves with the whole watchdog thing
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Donāt think so. They said they should have sent someone though
What could they have said they they hadnāt already?
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They arenāt going to give some guy with a blog the reason they are closing the account.
He claims to be an expert but thereās huge gaps in his knowledge that seem to be taken up with his ego.
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I doubt a guy with gaps in his knowledge would have a write up like this but hey what do I know.
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No, they said Tom was in hospital so he couldnāt appear on Watchdog, and the mistake was to not send anyone else instead.
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99.99999% of Monzo customers have absolutely no idea this is an āissueā
Nobody reads i and nobody is going to read this guy trying to drive clicks to his blog either.
Itās something that happens across all banks but aside from here, obscure sites online and that Facebook group full of morons, itās not on anyoneās radar.
The next time you see someone with a Monzo card, aka what they think of the account closers for people that have broken T&C, if they even know about it, Iād be surprised if you get anything more than a shrug.
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