I think it was partly because they wanted you to experience their stores/service in person, if possible, so they had the opportunity to wow you with things like instant debit card printing.
I am sure I read about someone over on the MSE forums who actually opened an account with them ages ago by sending in things in the post, after contacting their CEO and saying they wanted an account but lived too far away from a branch to open it in person.
Their branches still don’t cover the whole country, but it’s much wider coverage now than when they started (it was basically only London at first, for quite a while).
Which I do remember being wowed by once in fairness.
I opened a Metro account for fee free Europe spending before Mon(d)zo existed and was very impressed by walking in, opening, and walking out with my new card.
You’re right - but smart rules don’t work on Emma particularly well and they seem to have now shifted their focus onto developing an ‘all in one’ app with shares/crypto/splitwise type features
If monzo sorted manual accounts I think monzo plus gets you more for your £5/month than Emma offers for that price.
So what is the actual deal with a “manual account” then?
Would I have to enter a name and amount at the beginning and then update every so often? What happens if I forget/get distracted by dismal world events? What sort of regularity are we thinking? And so on
Kinda for Monzo to figure out, I think. But, for my money:
MVP = You enter the bank name, account name and your balance manually. You can update your balance at any time.
Advanced = You can enter transactions manually, so you don’t have to update the whole balance, just specifiy a change to it.
Automated = You tell Monzo about standing orders and it automatically updates balances on that schedule
Rocket ship = teach Monzo the account details and any transfers to/from that account automatically update the account balance and create a “transaction”.
Out of this world = you tell Monzo the APR and it also calculates interest…
I’m thinking of this for mortgages and savings accounts, rather than current accounts (which are likely to be available via open banking).
for me 