Competitor Update 2

Thanks Colin, that’ll be this then :smile:

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Happy cakeday! :tada:

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Some news on CityAM - http://www.cityam.com/269842/harrods-bank-sold-digital-challenger-tandem

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I looked in to Triodos a while back for savings and such. I decided against because I found out their roots are in evangelical Christianity and they still invest and give money to such things. I stayed with Co-op in the end.

I don’t want to offend anyone - each to their own, but to me personally, that’s a no-no and ruled it out for me.
I’m completely not anti-anyone, but religion makes me uncomfortable ( Raised Catholic, so it figures :stuck_out_tongue: )

It’s kind of obvious if you think about it - Trio-dos.

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When all this started and we had Mondo, Starling and Tandem - Tandem, to me, looked like the most promising, I liked the brand look and the card design more and it was the one I was most excited for.

I’m kind of sad the way it’s gone for Tandem. I signed up but heard nothing, then read various things about their funding and the loss of their banking license.

Then, a good while back, I received a mail saying I could download their test app. I went and downloaded it, thinking it would be a Monzo/Starling type beta - but it turned out to be some yolt-a-like account aggregation app. I must admit that I kind of stopped closely following developments with them after that - but now they’re randomly buying Harrod’s bank? Are they just buying customers/infrastructure? Weird.

At the moment I have both Monzo and Starling cards and I’ve just moved my main account to Starling. When all this is done and we have two full banks with everything fully functioning and app parity - I’ll potentially move to Monzo.

I’m impatient though and Monzo were so so slow on Android, the Android app being basically the list of transactions that they criticise other banks for being. If it were a choice between Monzo as it is on iOS (but on Android) or Starling, I’d be with Monzo full time - which is what I’m expecting in the future.

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Interested to know, Patrick, what it is about Monzo that will cause you to move banks.

I’d say I’m in a similar boat to @Pipefish . I’d now class my main account as Starling however I’m slowly moving things over to Monzo. Part of the main reason for this is Monzo feels like they are actually listen to their users and are more upfront and honest about any issues which is affecting their product (be it :monzo: or 3rd party issue).

I’ve also managed (fairly easy) to sign up at least 70 colleagues within my department, as the pay your contact feature is great! “Monzo it” is now a regular saying in the building

edit: my investor status doesn’t have an affect into my decision.

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I have starlig as my main account but I am intrigued by Monzo and I am keeping an eye out on there progress. As may be tempted to switch.

The lack of any warning of when Starling payments went down really made me rethink along with whats already been said. They dodge questions in the forum about in-app notifications. They seem to be under the impression they don’t need in-app notifications because the bank will be more reliable in the future ignoring reality.

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I found Monzo before Starling, I think it was still Mondo when I first registered my interest.

I always liked the design and the communication style of Monzo. (I registered for both Starling and Tandem too though and ran them alongside each other.)
Then Android stagnated with Monzo and they just didn’t seem to be paying any attention to it, at the same time Starling pretty much had parity and a working current account, so I started concentrating more on Starling. I started moving my account over to Starling last week.

The outages don’t concern me that much as I have plenty of backup options and it is in beta - but I do like the idea of everything being in house as Monzo are planning. It seems weird to me that a stand alone bank would rely on a third party.

I didn’t like the wheel thing (Starling’s pulse) but they’re planning to have that be customisable to show weekly or monthly spending - which will make it much better. Plus it has grown on me with use.

I much prefer the more compact look of the transaction list with Monzo and Monzo’s merchant logo game is far superior.

They’re two extremely similar products - in the end, for most people it’ll probably come down to which they like the look and style of most. I prefer Monzo.

At the moment I’m thinking that when there’s parity and when the current account is available l’ll switch.

But then Starling are ahead and if their app keeps improving and Monzo don’t get their Android act together I can also see a scenario where I just stay with Starling.

I don’t see switching banks multiple times as a big issue.

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Interesting, thanks Patrick. I imagine you’ve echoed the thoughts of a lot of folk.

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@Pipefish I think you put it nicely and all the points most of us think.

Lame duck Co-operative Bank announced that it lost about 25,000 current accounts during the first half of this year. It also saw £400m of instant access savings cash being withdrawn.

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It’s sad what’s happened there too (Co-op Bank). I felt uneasy after the hedge funds took them over - but as long as they have their ethical policy I think they’re legit.

The reason I left them in the end was because their on-line banking was so incredibly basic and bad. Until really recently you had to phone them to delete a payee. It was pretty much like a text-only website with about 2 functions (look at a list and ‘pay someone’). Now they’ve revamped it, it’s like a teenagers first attempt at Shockwave Flash.

I wanted to stay with them out of principle - just couldn’t hack it in the end. Their app was terrible and basic too, plus they still haven’t released Android Pay support more than a year after they released Apple Pay and a year or more of ‘we’re looking into it’ and ‘soon’.

All my insurance is with the Co-op - it’s such a chore, nothing is online. I’m sticking with that though because it’s all only once a year.

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I’ve signed up loads of friends and colleagues, and weirdly not one has ever said they’ve heard of Starling. Loads have heard of Monzo already. It surprises me Starling has so many users

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How many accounts has Starling opened? Do we know? Or is it ‘commercially sensitive’? :wink:

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5 posts were merged into an existing topic: Starling Feedback

9 posts were merged into an existing topic: Curve Feedback

FYI they sad at last night’s current account rollout event that they now have 5 Android developers, so I imagine that the gap will be closing. They originally said it would be a couple of months until the Android current account app would work, but it’s already ready, and I’m using it. So here’s hoping that they close the gap sooooon.

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I thought I’d see what the Atom app is like these days as their fixed savings accounts are competitive. I had previously signed up with a different phone number, so looked for a setting to change it in the app. No go. Tried online chat - ‘you need to call us as it is higher security’. What? Some random dude phoning is higher security than me going through the authentication in the app? They have facial recognition, voice print and a 6 digit PIN. I’m a bit perplexed…

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