Thereâs too many fintech cards around , itâs going to be interesting seeing who lasts
Article from TechCrunch:
Is there anypoint in Fintech that offer prepaid Mastercards when Monzo, Starling & N26 are about with a more complete offering?
Generally Iâd say no, apart from Revolut, who Iâd argue have a quite unique offering.
Never a good time to face redundancy but their 60 staff are probably going to get gobbled up in seconds by much better companies, so I donât feel too heartbroken about this.
Now if youâre a steelworker in Scunthorpe at the moment then I really do empathise.
I wonder what RBS was actually doing here? Shouldnât they be partnering and acquiring to help themselves convert their legacy technology into fintech?
From the sounds of it theyâve thrown a few quid at Loot and then cut and run very quickly seemingly without gaining anything.
The skeptic in me wonders if BĂł is going to suddenly have 60 new employees and a decent app.
Wonder how many extra customers this might mean for Monzo and how they will distinguish these from those primarily attracted by the new TV adverts
Loot has been on the scene for a long time, but does anyone actually know someone who uses one reguarly?
Their front page says â2.7m transactions with Lootâ - that seems like a very low number. If you had, say, 10,000 active users making 10+ transactions a month, youâd rack that up in just over a year.
Itâs a shame that Loot has gone into administration, but also not wholly unexpected.
At the time of the article they had 200,000 users
That article and the RBS funding was only a few months ago. I wonder what changed in that time?
That hints that on average each user has only used the card 10 times (taking the 2.7m transaction stats from their website). That feels like incredibly low engagement with the product, and a lot of money spent shipping out cards to people who never use them.
Be interesting to see more metrics and how these compare with others.
I remember seeing this advertised a lot - there was a waitlist to get it which made it seem quite popular. Their card looked quite nice imo.
Couldnât really compete with Monzo and the likes though because it was only a prepaid card.
The only good thing about Loot was the seethrough card design similar to N26 card with more colour. Their app was basic and needed updates.
Now a Monzo card in coral seethrough would be awesome.
be interesting to see if those 200,000 CX move to another non traditional bank⌠I guess it depends on how many of those used it as a novelty or was full LootâŚ
This same topic is on a few different forums now but I havenât seen a single person saying âwhat happens to my money that I have in Loot?â or even mentioning that they are a user of Loot. Certainly never seen #FullLoot tagged anywhere.
Is it reasonable to assume that they had virtually zero actual users?
They could come out and say they have 250k users but who is actually verifying this and should we believe it because it has been said? If Viola Black announce they have 456,789 users now, should we believe that?
Personally I donât believe Loot had anywhere near the 6-digits of real users.
I tried Loot a few years ago. It wasnât really up to much then and still isnât now (even before entering administration). Havenât used in ages so Iâd argue thereâs merit in your point about shipping a ton of cards out and them not being used. They just didnât develop the product. As soon as you had a basic app to view transactions and set a budget, app development seemed to grind to a halt.
On a side note - does anyone else find it slightly ironic that they operate a blog called âSKINTâ 
https://skint.loot.io/
On Thursday last week I spent 570 online from my loot card. The next day I get the notification that everyone with loot got saying that to fufill regulatory requirements no in payments will be made into loot accounts but other than that accounts will still work. The online order got cancelled due to not being in stock. The website says the payment was never taken just reserved from my loot account. Still not got the money back. Any advice?
From what I know about the payment process from this forum, if they only reserved the amount then that will âfall offâ after a short period (a week I think) and return to your account. If youâre concerned, Iâd contact Loot CS directly.
I wonder if Loot going under has had any impact on Monzo sign ups? Hard to determine as the timing coincides so closely with the TV Ad, but curious as to whether many whoâd gone down the pre-paid Loot route would now look for a current account with similar Merchant Data and features.