Competitor update

Interesting stuff. After taking a look at your website I assume this is a bring your own banking license type of offer then? Do you have any information on your pricing structure? I know monese sits on a white label prepaid platform I guess you are taking this to a bigger level with more than just prepaid options.

Got a notification about this company today - never saw them before but interesting concept

Hmmmm the fist 1000 to invest over £100.00 will have an exclusive Weswap Mastercard…What a prepaid or credit card? Most likely a prepaid card.

Prepaid mastercard I think - seems that most of the startups operate on prepaid mastercards - I wonder why they are more widely adopted than prepaid visa (presumably less fees or maybe a more innovative issuance company e.g. Wirecard)

This is entirely unfounded and unofficial but word on the line is that MasterCard are more willing to work with smaller issuers as they messed up their last debit offering (Maestro) in the UK. Visa already have a large customer base with the existing banks and their pricing model reflects the needs of those larger issuers (setup and one time fees can be high as long as per transaction and per card fees are minimal).

For prepaid specifically, Visa appear to have more direct control over their prepaid cards. From the outside, it looks as if they are designed to be Visa operated and controlled while simply branded with a company or retail store name. I see them in the US acting more as retail gift cards on the Visa network than something with a properly accessible account like the MasterCard prepaid Monzo/Revolut/Monese/Virgin Money/etc cards.

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Some banks like Handelsbanken have recently switched from Visa Debit to MasterCard Debit, and customer cards are gradually being replaced on renewal or if lost/stolen card replaced

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There we go, I must be slipping as I couldn’t remember if that part had been said here by anybody from the Monzo team. :anguished:

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happens as you get older :slight_smile:

Yes. Exactly right. You bring the licence, we’ll bring the platform. Our pricing is a pay-as-you-grow model. Effectively on a per transaction basis. But it really does depend on the client. But that is our preferred model.

Monese is just a pre-paid debit card with a nice app. The technology (very difficult to find out what it’s built on) may sit in the cloud but what will they do when they want to offer more services? And how will they make money? As you can see, they now charge a monthly fee for using their card. So that tells it’s own story.

What Leveris and Monzo are doing, is the only way you can drive innovation in a bank. By owning the whole stack, we can use agile product development to drop products and/or integrate 3rd party products through our open API’s.

All we are striving to do is create an open data platform that integrates innovation from various industries that deliver exceptional user experiences. Be that financial or otherwise.

I recently expanded my current account with Nationwide to an additional joint account with my girlfriend via only having to fill out a form online and going in store with ID. I filled out everything online, even though we live in different addresses there was no problem and I mainly use it to pay for shared activities such as travel, dinner, cinema etc.

The online experence is great IMO, where I can see my 1 personnal account and our joint account

Not a direct competitor of Monzo, as it’s not a bank and doesn’t appear to have any aspirations to become one, but Pariti have some pretty nice features around forecasting ones financial activity across multiple accounts, both debit, credit and savings and is able to predict when a person will be free of debt based upon spending and savings habits. I know cash flow forecasting is on the roadmap, under the better budgeting feature I think I’m right in saying.

As Monzo is building a bank to help us better manage our finances, maybe they should become friends, or at least learn from what they’re doing as it would be handy to see my expected income and expenses in one neat app :smile:

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Just spoke to Matthew, the CEO and founder of Pariti. He says they are working on it and can hopefully expect an integration soon :smile:

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Uber launches its own debit card for Mexicans, which this article states is

a local equivalent of Monzo and Simple.

Could be a future contender if they decide launch in other countries too, which I would see as highly likely if this venture of theirs proves successful.

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Thats cool! It seems the bank Bankaool is the one compared to Monzo rather than Uber’s card themselves. As for Uber, it looks like this is based around bringing more unbanked into the digital spending world (for which a prepaid offering is a good idea) - I wouldnt necessarily see this as their move into banking (unless they decide to invest heavily in the experiene)

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Yeah true :smile: Regardless of who they bank with, every honest person deserves an easy and trustworthy banking experience.

Who knows except for them really. They’ve already created a food delivery service after their initial taxi service.

Not strictly a Monzo competitor (and US only) - but interesting to read the consumer reaction to this metal credit card:

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I asked the same thing.

When their website works, Juno is something to look at as it’s a UK startup bank aimed mostly at millenials as is Monzo. The link I’ve provided goes to their page on BetaList.

I had a look at their website and it not loading properly at the moment but gives their ethos and their target groups such as freelancers and a form to provide your email address to get on their mailing list