Spotted a link to this in my Twitter feed today. Thought I saw it here earlier but seems to have disappeared
Just had a read of that. Some interesting commentary there. Quite speculative though from what I see. I do wonder if heās onto something though with those comparisons to N26.
It would explain why Monzo was among the group of fintechs that had to email me a year or so after I signed up asking for more information that they neglected to collect during the on boarding. Without it, I donāt believe banks are allowed to offer their services to you. At least thatās the explanation I got from Atom when I queried it. So when Monzo and N26 came knocking for the same stuff, I just provided it.
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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 
Since when is āarsyā a reason to remove posts?
Plus I had also posted it earlier, without any comment, and it also was removed in minutes.
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?
Never had a double transaction from Tesco on my Amex. I havenāt used checkouts much these past months but itās ok online
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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They have, but Iāve not seen it happen on other banks personally. Perhaps Tescoās system isnāt compatible with Monzoās
My personal guess (and thatās really all it is) on that Tesco issue is that itās something where Tesco do things slightly differently from the norm / Mastercard rules. That they do it in such a way that other banks/card providers have found work arounds/bodges to make it work, but monzo have not done so - either deliberately, because they like sticking to rules, or otherwise, due to lack of time or capability (which I find unlikely).
IF that was true, then monzo staff would be correct in saying that its technically Tescoās fault, but it would also explain why other providers donāt have the same issue.
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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Yep, these are quite common I notice. Monzo usually does hide them too, but from time to time one will slip through the cracks and Iāll get double charged and have to wait several weeks for the initial pending one to reverse.
Amazon is a common culprit in my case.*
*And by common, I mean very rare, but in that rare instance, itās usually an Amazon transaction
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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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Perhaps youāre in a good position to answer this one, if youāre able to!
About a year after being with Atom, should be sometime in 2017 which lines up with your dates, they sent me an email to ask for my tax residency info, stating that they needed that information in order to provide me with banking services and that they should have collected it during the on boarding but didnāt. Atom were the first bank to have done this, when I probed them on it, they told other banks will have collected that information when I signed up, and that if I didnāt provide them with it, I wouldnāt be able to have any accounts with them.
When Monzo launched their current account, I signed up for it. That was in 2018. They also did not ask for my tax residency during sign up. Sometime after signing up, I donāt recall how long, I received an email from Monzo that was identical to the one I received from Atom. So I didnāt ask any questions, and just gave them what they asked for and carried on as usual.
When N26 launched, the same thing happened there. A few months after launch, same email, so I provided them with the details. They also wanted my national insurance number, but I donāt recall if Atom or Monzo asked for that too.
Given that this appeared to be a regulatory requirement, I presume had I not provided Monzo my tax residency, they wouldnt have been able to offer me a current account and it would have been closed in a similar fashion to what weāve been seeing? Perhaps thatās played a part in some of these, and lends some credence to Chris Skinnerās theory.
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