It would! If I had to guess I’d say it’s probably the things that are most different about their two approaches - transparency, engagement with users & their tone (+ potentially, technology) - that caused the disagreements.
I feel I can relate to the Monzo team & that they share my values a lot more than Starling so if I was Tom, I’d be pretty frustrated if I felt that they didn’t understand them. In my opinion, those things are going to be pretty critical for Monzo’s growth, although as we’re seeing, Starling are starting to do a pretty good impression of Monzo now.
@alexs hits the nail on the head here - I have a starling account and it’s fine, but it doesn’t enthuse me like Monzo does. I feel Monzo have ideals that are aligned with what I want, I simply don’t get that with startling, they are just a modern bank account.
To be honest I think both accounts are similarly aligned its just the marketing and styling is a little different.
In the long term, we are already “the converted”, for them to survive long term they need to convince the masses that they are credible and can be trusted with their monthly pay cheque and I think that will be a tougher sell.
Otherwise we could see Monzling or perhaps StarZo once Tom and his counterparts at Starling move onto their next big life projects.
i agree @Smallhorse its similar to android and iOS. they essantially do the same thing but the approach is different (supported by the philosophies).
also agree with the long game, preaching to the masses that this is the future and getting that right (along with the product offering(s) and being trusted as well. finances is still arguably a taboo in this country and with the majority, if it aint broken why change (also the case when it is broken, they wont change)
Here’s some more details on Zopa’s plans to become a bank, unsurprisingly it sounds like the main motivation for them is being able to do balance sheet lending -
credit cards and auto-finance will be among the first products
It sounds like things are going fairly well for Curve -
More than 50,000 SMEs (presumably quite a few of those are actually consumers) have signed up for the London-based start-up’s programme
They’re working on a consumer version of the programme
They’re planning to expand into Europe this year
They’re working on account aggregation
Curve also announced it has raised $5 million in seed funding from venture capitalists and fintech entrepreneurs, and will close a Series A funding round this month. Last September, the company raised £2 million ($2.5 million) in post-seed investment.
It might also just be lots of small things, rather than one big thing. Might be that Tom had different ideas about various details, but didn’t have the freedom to act on it because Anne had a clear vision of how she wanted Staling to work. If you have two people with strong visions that differ in small but important ways, the best thing is probably for them to pursue the, separately instead of one or both compromising and being unhappy.
I seem to remember from one of the interviews with Tom, that he and Anne are still on decent terms and periodically see each other. It might be there’s no big story to tell. Or it might be good PR not to air dirty laundry, and there’s a massive story to tell.
Looks to me like something has happened to Blossom. It seems their website is no longer reachable (https://www.blossomapp.co.uk) and their Twitter account seems to have vanished too.
Just hoping monzo do a better job than android with the openness ! Looks like they are. But it could become an unwieldy beast, like android, or like that time when Facebook allowed page apps that landed up making it looked like MySpace. There’s a reason MySpace died
Blossom was very early in the product validation lifecycle and the website and twitter account were there to assess market reception. While they believe it is a strong concept, they’ve subsequently focused 100% on delivering and scaling the Paybase Platform - the core systems which would have been behind the Blossom concept.
The Platform, aimed at businesses looking to build products like Blossom, massively decreases the complexity, cost and time to market for businesses with complex payments requirements.
Just had a email from Atom bank saying that they are postponing setting up their current account until 2018 or even later due to new regulations that might be arriving at some point in the future.
I have a curve card,
but its ended up creating more problems than it solves.
Yes its useful for international transactions, but i end up have to concentrate on which “account” is active on the card so i don’t end up with stuff debited from the wrong account.
Then reconciling the bank account transactions against actual cost centres in Quickbooks is also more work as they all appear to goto the same payee.
Plus even more of a hassle with reoccurring credit card transactions.
I’m still trying to work out what problems is really solves,
Apologies if this has been posted elsewhere but does anyone have experience of closing a Revolut account?
I am seriously cheesed off with them this weekend after a supposed “turbo transfer” took 31 hours to complete and then when talking to support I was asked “why I was using Revolut” and why I was transferring money to a GBP account in my name. I then had to provide proof of the origin of the funds via a bank statement from the receiving account.
They thanked me for my cooperation (I assume to check I am not laundering money) and my account is active - I understand why they are doing it but I felt the tone and approach were all out. One has to be the specially careful with the written media and I get the impression that some if not all of their agents are not native English speakers.
The big advantage of Revolut vs Monzo for me is to be able to move money between my accounts. If I “over top up” my Monzo at present the only way to proceed is to pull out the cash then pay in to the other account manually.
Has anyone got experience of closing a Revolut account?
I don’t have any experience closing a Revolut account I’m afraid but just to mention, the transferring money limitation will go away when Monzo launch the current accounts, this summer.
