If you were only allowed ONE current account, who would that current account be with?
AIB Group (UK) p.l.c.
Bank Of Ireland
Bank of Scotland
Barclays
Chase
Clydesdale
Co-operative
Danske
Dozens
Halifax
HSBC
Lloyds Bank
Metro Bank
Monzo
Nationwide
NatWest
RBS
Revolut
Santander
Starling Bank
Tesco Bank
Triodos Bank
TSB
Ulster Bank
Virgin Money (inc Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank)
Someone else (tell us who below)
0voters
A quick point on methodology: I’ve used the list of CASS participants and added in Chase, Dozens and Revolut for completeness, as well as Metro who seem oddly missing from the CASS list …
Monzo is (very nearly) the best aggregator for external accounts out there (just give me manual accounts, pls thx) - I’d miss that, pots and the app generally.
This might be a cheat, but you can cheque image into a Halifax savings account, so that’s cheques sorted.
I have Premium so paying in cash is no problem (I use a Co-op - no ethical problems with the cost to sole traders and consistently trained staff).
If I couldn’t have Monzo for whatever reason, I think it’d be either Nationwide or Starling. Probably Nationwide for the packaged account (to replace Monzo Premium), even though Starling’s app is miles away better.
For everyone voting for Chase, do you have no need for cash or cheque deposits? Is that an okay trade-off for you? (No judgement, just curious about the balance here).
I voted Chase as the best fit, but in reality I would never want to pick only one current account anyway as no single account does everything I want/need.
I do have a need to pay in cheques sometimes, and potentially cash even more occasionally, but both those things are rare so for the purposes of the poll Chase’s cashback was judged as more valuable for me.
Getting paid early is absolutely essential to me because one of my favourite things in the world is reconciling my budget & spreadsheets, which I can’t do at a random time between midnight and am
I think only Monzo & Revolut offer this? So Monzo for me
I was about to say monzo, because I use my monzo account for everything.
But then I remembered that I don’t. I use starling for cheques and first direct for cash (although I’ve not had cash for ages). I could use monzo and post cheques but, after a couple of bad experiences, I honestly see PayPoint as a service that simply doesn’t work.
If I could have only one, I chose Natwest. Their app is “good enough” for a legacy bank plus it does nearly everything I want.
I still like Monzo for day to day and business though, though the latter lacks a lot of functionality that you get with the former, for no apparent reason*
*Trends mainly plus the fact I have to “double pay” for Plus and then also Business Plus is a bit annoying, when the only extra feature I get is tax pots
The jist of my post last night, that I then convinced myself something different, was that Monzo is far better for me on a day-to-day basis but the super edge cases, like my upcoming house deposit, a large cheque, lots of cash in/out and wanting to speak to someone to solve a problem, those things are better served by a traditional bank, in my case, Lloyds.
I think I edge towards Monzo now, the things I use every single day, outweigh the things I do incredibly rarely. Never moving again!!!, I haven’t done anything with cash in years, I haven’t had a big problem I need to solve, so lots of these are “what ifs” but I know Lloyds deal with them better than Monzo.
But I sure as shit would be the biggest moaner alive when I couldn’t transfer money over £10k without a fight, my cheque was lost or chat don’t listen/respond/answer the phone.
Like @SebH I voted Chase because it’s an all around best fit.
I do still use cash to some degree and that’s partly why I chose them, because the withdrawal limit is substantially higher than other digital only banks. I never pay in cash. Too much hassle even with a high street bank for me. Once I’ve got money in cash it stays as cash until it’s either spent, lost, or I donate it just to get rid of whatever’s left over.
I do still use cheques, but they’re rare, and it’s the only use case where they don’t work for me.
Otherwise I feel like their proposition is the best if I’m only going to have one account.
I like how their approach is both simple in execution, but exhaustive enough that it covers almost all of the same use cases Monzo does for me, but with less friction.
Monzo’s highly effective marketing prowess in play here! Doing it at 4pm is perhaps unique, but the actual feature of being paid early isn’t. A lot of banks automatically release BACS payments into your account at the end of day 1 or day 2 of the process. They just don’t talk about it.
Monzo. Because the app and backend software were developed at the same time, and so the app doesn’t feel like a bolt-on to some very, very grungy old Cobol systems. I had so many problems with legacy banks where the interface subtly lies, or is just broken altogether.
As much as I / we complain on here about this and that, Monzo is really massively beyond what I’ve seen elsewhere. Just give me custom categories in the joint account and I’ll shut up, honest.
Monzo simply because it is the ONE I’ve already chosen. Been with monzo since the beta days and they have been my main account since they became a bank.
Over the years I’ve since closed my other accounts (Ulster Bank and NatWest) to keep things tidy.
I’ve also since opened a Starling account for cheque imaging (which I’ve used twice in two years), and to have just as a backup account. but would happily close it if I was only allowed to deal with one bank.
Monzo isn’t perfect but it’s pretty great. For another bank to win me over and overcome my inertia it’s going to have to be more than just on a par with or incrementally better than monzo, it’s going to have to be much much better. Much in the same way that when monzo and its app appeared on the scene it brought with it a vastly better day to day experience to me compared to Ulster Bank.
I almost chose Starling myself, but picked Chase because I’m currently making use of the cashback on a daily basis but rarely would need to deal with cash or cheques. There is something to be said for the option being there though.
This sentence describes most people, just with whatever bank they are using in place of the word Monzo!
Once you realise that, you start to see the uphill battle for Monzo in acquiring more customers in the longer term. Especially when they are “missing features” compared to many other banks.
By the way, Ulster Bank has also come on quite some way since you last gave them a look - making the gulf between them and Monzo significantly narrower, and even surpassing Monzo in several ways (cheque imaging, for one).
I’m sure many customers do feel similarly and that’s why there needs to be a focus on fit and finish, better support and also “boring” features like support for incoming international payments, in my opinion. These things come up time and time again here and it shows the same sentiment is widespread.
I think that is very debatable when they don’t offer the widest set of supported accounts. Supported accounts are the primary consideration in an aggregator, everything else is secondary. Also, they’d better be the best when you have to pay for it.
I’d advise against expressing opinions as facts! For you I’m sure this is true. For me, though, it’s about the depth of functionality - the current range of connected accounts with the same functionality as a native Monzo account (search, tags, notes, tabs etc) would be hard to beat. And yes, we don’t have that yet, hence my “very nearly” caveat.
…
