Do I need to have a physical bank?

Financial Chat
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Hello guys, thanks in advance for being so nice and helpful.
I’ve recently moved to the uk and opened my Monzo around a month ago, now I am curious to know that is it necessary or something else to have another traditional bank beside Monzo?

In fact I’m totally satisfied with Monzo and can do everything that I need and want.

I much appreciate your response.

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Need? No. Sensible? Yes.

I have a Lloyds account too. Always good to have a back up and not all your eggs in one basket.

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The only thing I’ve needed a physical bank (well, a post office) for is depositing cash.

Monzo’s solution is paying to pay in cash at a newsagent. I just pay in to First Direct at a post office and transfer it straight over to Monzo.

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Given that a lot of newsagents/small shops are also Post Offices, I’d certainly like to see Monzo take advantage of that for depositing both cheques and cash at the counter. It might go some way of allowing POs to survive as like banks, they’ve vanishing far too frequently. But then again, it may not.

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The simple answer is as @Revels has said: you don’t need another account at all, but it is always a good idea to have a backup if you can.

A backup account of any type would give you a spare card, an account to use if you had issues with your Monzo account and an independent place to keep some emergency money.

You may want your backup account to also be a traditional physical bank if you think you might need to deal with things that Monzo doesn’t do well or at all. These would include:

  • Writing cheques to people or paying-in cheques from other people/businesses
  • Paying in cash or withdrawing cash in specific amounts or high amounts beyond standard ATM limits
  • Talking to someone about your accounts face-to-face
  • Receiving international payments to an IBAN (Monzo can’t currently do this, although you can make international payments to other people from Monzo via Wise).
  • Unusual things which are difficult to do with Monzo compared to traditional banks (like making a very large payment to buy a house, for example, which is often sorted out in a branch visit but can be a longer and more difficult process with Monzo)
  • If you just want to do banking in person (perhaps because you just feel more comfortable doing that)
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