Who cares who’s at fault? It’s pretty hilarious a design agency would mock up something that is clearly a rip off then allow it to be published…
Let’s just see the funny side to it.
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I wonder how much they charged Halifax for “creative” that was then copied and pasted from Monzo. I can’t imagine it was cheap and it doesn’t say a lot for a supposedly professional “award winning agency” when they can’t come up with fresh ideas.
Some of the replies on Twitter are brutal 
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It has hit Sky News where people are quoted saying that the budget wheel is stolen from Starling too:
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We’re being nice and sensible and discussing it the media not so much
Must be a slow news day 
Interesting and funny side note on the corner of the internet, yes. Mainstream news worthy? Not so much
Some of those responses are savage, having a quiet giggle to myself here
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Good intention on Halifax’s behalf for trying to catch up with Fintechs. More competitions just bring better service. It also means Fintechs will have to do more than just sweating over “a new logo” or “different card colour for each type of account”. If Halifax can do (which they will because they can afford to) some Monzo features like live balance notifications, PIN reminder, saving pots, e-receipts, etc. then I’d find it very difficult to whack out the hot coral card as my first choice for personal spending in the UK anymore.
Shame that the agency is too lazy that they stole Starling’s teal card colour and summary pie chart. 
Pastel is an okay palette, feels quite homely which fits into Halifax’s mortgage-focus target atm. The current Windows 98 style is such an eye sore. I was surprised NationWide went in that direction instead of choosing a more contemporary palette.
It is an interesting topic, this. The banks that have held such dominance for such a long time are now starting to experience a shift in customer expectations that finally has an impact to them. Enough to make them need to implement the same sorts of features the likes of Monzo, Starling, Revolut etc. provide. When this is recognised, they can easily start up a new brand (B, for instance) or reinvent what they have into something more appealing and in line with the offerings of the new breeds.
The worrying thing for the newcomers is the fact that for a few hundred million pounds this technology can be built from scratch, in good time and offering real competition with the high availability and extensive reach they currently have. This is small change for the big boys, and although it’s very likely to be implemented in an old fashioned way at the back end, as long as the front end is slick nobody will A) know and B) care… until something goes wrong at the scale of TSB’s meltdown last year.
I hope the likes of Monzo do continue to disrupt and continue to take market share, but with such backing, if the old banks do keep up then it’s difficult to see what really separates everyone and the banking system won’t really progress.
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Doesn’t look like they copied the Pulse graph!
#ScrapTheGraph
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I opened a joint account, don’t recall there being a graph and it looked so much better without.
Though need to double check to be sure - need to pry my phone from the fingers of my boy first!!
#wishmeluck #letthebattlecommence
The Pulse graph will appear after enough usage data has been created, IIRC.
Where is the dislike button? 
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@anon83334443, I agree that this is a risk for the challenger banks. However, the delivery mechanisms of the traditional banks are much less efficient than the challengers’, and delivering like for like will cost a great deal more, and take 3-10 times as long 
. Therefore, they’ll always be playing catch-up, and the challengers should retain the advantage (at least until their own systems and bureaucracy become so inefficient that they face similar challenges - but I wouldn’t expect that to happen anytime soon).
As @anon91821566 previously said, “There is a saying in ice hockey: ‘You’ve got to skate where the puck is going’. If you skate at the puck, it will have moved so far ahead by the time you get there that you’ll have missed it. Banks are looking at us. We are the puck.”
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I’m pretty sure that is a Wayne Gretzky quote.
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You may have missed the news, but most of them already do 99% of what monzo does and it’s only April.
I’m not convinced. I think the legacy banks are very aware that times are changing and are starting to divert properly focused, agile teams towards improving their offerings. And given there are a couple of fintech banks to look at for ‘inspiration’ then it’s not a massive leap to get a similar offering in place.
@gmclean, I agree that they’re aspiring to that, but their governance structures, extreme risk aversion and current reliance on legacy systems do massively slow them down. In Halifax’s case, the complexity of their offering and therefore what the app has to do is certainly also a factor: it can’t help that their app is built to support different types of current accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, cash ISAs, home insurance etc.
Not to mention that their advertising is still very much focused on branch interactions…
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Fair enough for Halifax, but I can think of two or three other banks which are looking at various cloud platforms, data solutions etc (and are listed on those websites as customers).
Interesting times ahead either way, and my only fear is that unless Monzo et all shift a LOT of users over to their systems, they will not only get caught up in a year or two, but swamped. Legacy customers don’t want to move but will many will love the ‘new ideas’ in their new banking apps I’m sure.
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Well, apparently the remaining 1% includes real-time transaction posting, and real-time balance, which to me are helpful in managing my budget.
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It’s worth pointing out that I’ve experienced very few issues with my legacy banking apps, in part, because they are pretty stale (they were at least), not very feature rich, and did the bare minimum.
You could argue (with all of their security steps), that these apps echoed the banks, and were risk averse.
The thing is, it would seem most people want their bank to be risk averse - They don’t want their app to contain bugs every week - Especially when it’s a mobile only bank.
People like me, you and many others on the forum don’t mind as much - We enjoy being part of the ride.
But millions of others (I’d guess), won’t want to be a beta tester for their main bank…
This forum represents a tiny portion of the customer base, and even less of the potential customer base (as far as attitudes to banking go).
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