Competitor update

I did a similar thing.

I’d signed up early, but I don’t really need a 1 year savings account, so I can’t do much beyond the demo account and the demo account can only show so much. I’m definitely in the one of the 40,000 potential customers - but the offering so far isn’t for me.

Ditto here - in my opinion a damp squib and a wasted opportunity for them to attract customers (that don’t want a fixed term savings account)!

Not a fan of the facial recognition either - it seems to work but I’d rather tap in my 6 digit passcode anyday than look at myself (and it recognises it much more quickly than it recognises me)!

For real, it feels a lot more like you’re playing candy crush than handling money. I can totally see what they’re going for, but it all seems rather overblown way to visualise what should be very accessible data. Big bubble things for predicted interest and the like.

I suspect what @toychicken said is probably very true of their process…

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Funnily enough, using Unity is not a crazy idea. It has a great workflow for writing code once, and deploying to multiple platforms (something which Monzo must have some sympathy with) - and there’s certainly no reason you couldn’t build a ‘conventional’ looking interface with it. That said, my guess is they’ve been lured by the prospect of going a bit bonkers. To quote Dr Ian Malcolm - “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

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Haha, indeed! :smile:

The easiest solution isn’t always the best as described by Hugo:

But I’m more concerned about potential security loopholes tbh.

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.

Anyone (italian in particular) interested in what Unicredit si trying to build with buddybank?

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!

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A much more accurate analogy compared to my “sugar-coated” one.

Some interesting stats from this story

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-28/neobanks-chasing-u-k-s-biggest-lenders-face-battle-for-survival?utm_content=bufferdea51&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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 :thinking:

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


@Will1 & Jonathan Lind got a mention.

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While Monzo is working on targets, Atom is working on…

They’re redesigning some icons. Great.

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Simple rolls out shared bank accounts that work for anyone, including roommates

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That looks interesting. It’s nothing earth shattering but it’s certainly a good direction to be going in.

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

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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)

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Santander was by far the worst banking experience I’ve ever had in my life and that was just with a supposedly plain and simple current account.

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That’s why, in their previous incarnation, they were called the ‘Shabby National’.

Now they are ‘Shitander’ …

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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 ?

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