It seems some banks are starting to take the public and government demands for smarter and more modern banking seriously. Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank have created B which is essentially a sugar-coated version of what most mobile banking apps already do.
Behind the scenes the way the money moves around is still the same and therefore still very slow in comparison with Monzo, but I think that it may be aware of Monzo and/or competitors and are rightfully scared. They’ve used a very bright and contemporary modern design and included features like automatic categorising of payments, budgets, cash flow forecasting and virtual saving pots.
They do have the disadvantage of requiring you to call or visit them in branch if you want an overdraft, and for the target audience of Monzo who are too busy and/or too cool for that nonsense it’s less than satisfactory.
While I don’t think it’ll be able to match the intelligence of Monzo’s upcoming features, especially bill splitting (not without enormous and lengthily system overhauls) or speed of transactions, I am glad the banking industry is finally getting smarter.
Buddybank is a mobile bank designed exclusively for smartphones which will open in Italy on 1st January 2017 with authorization by their national supervisory authorities.
Someone on here a while back described the Clydesdale/Yorkshire Bank venture in to the 21st Century as “a pig with lipstick”. Spot on, I reckon - too little, too late.
Doubt their entrenched attitudes will change even if they overhaul their systems!
that help put the Atom user figures (Bloomberg says which are actually lower at 1,800 customers) in context
Atom
1,800 customers & 16 million pounds deposited
Monzo
35,000 prepaid debit cards & 31.7 million pounds deposited
So roughly the same number of users as Atom (40,000) but twice the value of deposits, despite no FSCS protection? Something’s not adding up there
Also,
Atom’s Thomson said his company will seek 100 million pounds next year, on top of 135 million pounds it already raised.
whereas
Monzo has raised about 8 million pounds, most of it from Passion Capital, an early-stage venture-capital firm. It plans to raise an additional 20 million pounds
The offering from Simple is interesting but they only offer accounts to permanent residents of the United States over 18 years of age with a US Social Security number. They do not offer accounts in the UK
Simpler joint account banking would be great - setting up one with Santander was a horrendous experience (involved having to send in a ‘ive moved home’ form even though i havent!! Ended up with 2 seperate online banking logons for myself, 2 customer numbers etc etc)
Looks like the big banks are finally catching on to the potential threat from mobile only banks, will they try to hoover up or squash the competition ?
If they do acquire the mobile only bank will that take us back to same old same old - the banks that feel they own their customers but with snappy apps that will be independently run ?
More then likely hover them up. If that does not work then you will see them getting a lot more aggressive. Maybe in their pricing structure or maybe just in the way they create and market their apps.
I downloaded the Curve app, when I saw it was £35 for a card I was horrified, couldn’t see the benefits really. Then a few weeks went by they gave me a code and issued me a card for free. Saving the £35. I wait for the card and see what this is all about