I feel the US full launch is key. There’s growing competition there, Monzo could lose its foothold there entirely. I’d have thought they’d be doing both the US and Europe by now.
If it grows into a U.K. only bank, it’ll be much smaller than it was first envisaged to become. And that’s not going to be great for the valuation
I think this is accurate-ish in a way?
I feel that since the event things have slowed down a bit, but that’s perhaps for the better.
I also agree with @N26throwaway that things seem healthier, and I welcome the engagement from Monzo too
So although there is less happening, the less is better quality
Had been meaning to do a “what we’re still waiting for” post, which I think fits in quite nicely following this!
So…
Virtual cards
Pots
External accounts
Categories
I think these are all the big ones??? At least a few months of very concrete hints for some of these now, and probably even longer of vaguer teases.
It’s interesting to see how things are coming along…
Agreed. Bank cards are still a basic requirement. I wouldn’t feel comfortable relying on contactless cash points (do monzo customers have access to them?), and I wouldn’t be able to pay in cash via PayPoint, so I’d have to be completely cash free. Even then, there are times when I need my card to pay for something because the merchant doesn’t support Apple Pay properly. So, overall, I think ‘no debit card’ would either be a terribly unreliable experience, or encourage people to use Monzo as a secondary account only.
For me, Monzo need to sort out their customer service. It’s still not clear that you can rely on Monzo for large purchases such as cars or houses. Some of the recent horror stories are unforgivable.
This is an interesting space to watch. I remain convinced that monzo need to expand their lending options because it seems to be the #1 way for banks to make money.
But, I fully understand Tom Blomfield’s feelings that credit cards are bad. They redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich (with penalty fees, interest payments, etc for the struggling, and cashback and rewards for the better off), they help people fall into debt, the 56-days interest free credit thing is virtually the opposite of Monzo’s “instant notifications” and abolition/hiding of pending payments… I still don’t see how Monzo will offer credit cards in a new or original way. I think it more likely that they’ll offer something that’s similar to all the other offerings (but that’s not a complaint; I just don’t see an alternative).
One thing they could do is bring greater transparency to what interest you’ll pay, what for, and when you’ll pay, and guide the user on what they need to do to avoid paying any fees at all.
A little bit like how Apple Card does things in the US. It brings the benefits of the credit card, but goes above and beyond to try to mitigate the downsides. Monzo certainly have the app, tech stack, and software expertise to pull that off. But I’d like to see them go a little further and try to reinvent the way we use credit somewhat.
I think if they’re going to go down a credit route at some point, they really need to beat Apple Card to the U.K. market. First mover advantage is going to be everything for them, because right now, the only decent fintech credit card is Tymit from what I’ve seen. So they have little competition right now.
Klarna have maybe managed this but I’m not sure their services are good for consumers.
There’s a risk - if not an inevitability - that ‘reinventing the way we use credit’ leads to more complexity.
In terms of fin tech cards but I think that’s very niche. Sure some people care about having a cool/techhy product in their wallet but I don’t think it’s many.
Credit is extremely competitive in general though. I’ve never paid any interest at all, for years, and not only that I also earn cash back, air miles etc. I’m basically being paid to use my card in the hopes I might slip into debt.
Very difficult to compete in the credit field imo - responsible users will use Amex or reward cards, less responsible / astute users will go for the biggest limits, Monzo may not be able to compete with either.
So the time has come! How have we done? 
Dear reader, I was horribly over-optimistic in my predictions but failed to predict a couple of significant events.
But let’s dive deeper. Here’s my assessment of my mystical prediction abilities:
Monzo will bring new features to Plus and Premium accounts.
fail. There’s been no such offer. Sadness.
we got this! The Community was happy.
fail. I’m LOLing at my optimism. I suspect this was pitched internally and written off early as far too complicated. It’s a big shame but Monzo doesn’t seem to have the stamina or ability to grapple with the really difficult problems so it’s probably for the best. Who’d want something half baked released with unrealised promises that it’ll be fixed?
fail. I thought this one might be an easy win, but looks like it wasn’t. We have more connected accounts (an easy prediction that I missed) but no search, no notes, no tags, no tabs, no bill splitting…
fail. Another one that I thought would be an easy win. After all, this has been developed for business accounts. Won’t it scale? Or is the attitude more that they have the revenue they want from paid accounts so they don’t need to do more? Feels like a baffling (non) decision.
Monzo will stop issuing physical cards by default - to both save money and help the environment.
is was a bit left field predicting, but having heard the number of times that some customers replace their cards (which led to recent restrictions on the number of times you can order a free replacement) and the big COP26 environmental summit, I thought that Monzo could both score a win on costs and marketing by making cards optional. I didn’t think they’d be paid for, just that you’d need to actively order one during sign up or manually through the app. But no. Perhaps it’s to prevent financial crime by having the card sent to the resisted address? Maybe no one considered it as an idea. We’ll never know.
The core app will remain practically unchanged
The payments tab was updated at the beginning of the year, but the changes seemed to be over before it was properly finished.
For me, it was actually a step backwards as it removed functionality to store previous references. Like many things, it seemed to be intended to be a stepping stone to future changes. We’re yet to see those and I suspect sooner or later the whole thing will be rebuilt (again). And it won’t be finished (again). I’m already sad in anticipation.
I think this is probably a tick. We have trends but it doesn’t do budgeting (yet?). So we have Summary and it’s budgeting functions. Which haven’t changed. Sadness.
what more to say?
Now, this one is contentious. We had Trends during 2020 (yay) but I’d argue that it’s not particularly in depth. You can’t compare periods, are stuck with looking at monthly data - and it suffers from the same problem as the old pulse graph: big up front bills mean the graphs have little value. As I write, I wonder if Monzo is destined to, like the app equivalent of painting the Forth Bridge, rework sections of the app ad infinitum, but to never to really increase usefulness and destined not to grip the difficult questions and remake the same mistakes over and over.
Losses will mount this year.
So I got the headline right
But the detail, not so much:
There was some froth, but all in all I thought the media coverage was more measured than I’d feared.
Nope. Not seen any speculation on that.
I think I got it right where it matters though. Monzo is (checks notes) independent. And has indeed moved towards profitability. I’m pretty sure that’s part of a plan.
This Community will wither but still be around
I’m not sure they know it exists, to be honest.
(At some point I’ll probably write something about genuine vs superficial community engagement, why crowdfunding is a bad idea if it’s a marketing gimmick and how to make the most of genuine engagement. But that time is not now).
Nope. Didn’t happen.
Sadly true, in the UK at least. There were US ones. But they don’t count. Sorry Usaians!
International payments will formally launch, but only for business customers.
Not this one either. Might have to give back my crystal ball and turn in my mystic registration papers.
Monzo will still be working on a US launch, but it won’t be a priority and US staff numbers may decrease. It will still be in beta by the end of the year and there will be speculation about its future.
This one’s a mixed bag. Monzo is, indeed, still working on a US launch. And indeed it is still in beta. We don’t know about staff numbers or priority in the business. I missed the big “No US licence” announcement, but there has been some speculation (on here mostly) about its future, even though Monzo has said it’s committed to the market despite the setback.
: Monzo will announce it is overhauling lending. Nothing tangible will change for users, though.
Now, this didn’t happen. No announcement. But there was a tangible change as Flex was launched. (Wrapping the crystal ball for its return as I type).
There will be a limited beta of a Monzo credit card.
Not really… But I take a bit of comfort if you squint (and look at the virtual card) Flex is a little bit credit card ish. Maybe.
Starling still hasn’t unleashed their long trailed credit card. Maybe Anne is too busy fighting fintech CEOs? 
I make that about 9/23 depending on how you count. It’s a pity that Mr Goxx has died and can’t do next year’s predictions.
‐------
But was I better at the world outside of Monzo?
Starling acquired a lender and a loan book. I think the app is largely unchanged but expecting a flurry of angry Starling-stans in 3, 2, 1…
Again, I’m expecting an army of Rev devotees to correct me, but I wasn’t particularly impressed by Revolut’s innovation. We can say, though, that it’s unequivocally not a UK bank (unless there’s news in the last days of 2021…)
It’s still sink or swim. The AC, the Dozens CEO, gave a masterpiece in customer communications on its current status, though. The latest is that there’s been some funding offers that are being worked through. Will it still be on deathwatch in 2022?
Nope. Like a lot of these I think I was probably just a year or two early…
I refer the honourable reader to my previous answer…
And again… Flow is interested in coming here. But will they?
1/7. Terrible.
I still think this sort of thing is an eventuality rather than an if at this point. If not a bank leading the charge then the regulator, as ever, remaining in the driving seat when it comes to U.K. financial innovation.
We’ve seen it begin to happen in Europe, and perhaps elsewhere.
The only real difference is that we’re used to getting cards for free, whereas Europeans typically have to pay for them anyway, so there’s an added incentive in that if there’s no need to order a physical card, you don’t need to pay.
Suggesting we follow suit tends to fall on deaf ears as a result. There’s always some justification for why we shouldn’t, but all of them rely ardently on it being a forced thing and having a pay, but neither of those aspects need be apart of the initiative.
But eventually I think we’ll see all banks go mobile wallet only by default, with the option for the customer to order a free card by default. I think this sort of thing will start in a similar fashion to Nationwide’s FlexDirect account, and I think a traditional bank will lead the charge here. But it’s going to happen. Not a matter of if, but when.
There has been some kind of consolidation: Coconut won’t provide bank accounts for much longer.
I worry about this. They really need to have a better split between discretionary and mandatory spending across the whole app. The two operate totally differently. They’re almost different kinds of money. But Monzo don’t seem to be moving their budgeting in that direction, and Trends is mostly confusing / useless to me.
Although I don’t have an account with either neobank, I believe this is what Starling have done with their bills spaces. Now they just need better analytics (unless it’s already there?)
You could argue that they’re just catching up to Monzo here. It’s not so much the segregation, it’s the analytics: Starling seems to have little to none.
I agree that they don’t have the same analytics tools, but they have managed to split discretionary and committed spend from whatever little analytics they do. I believe bills spaces spend doesn’t show on the main pie chart thing
This is probably worthy of another thread, but Starling’s pie chart is just a bit of tinsel for me - it’s not actuality useful. And the fact you can’t use your overdraft for bills pots (which is my use case - to give me a buffer in case of an unexpectedly larger than usual direct debit) means it has no utility for me.
As for my, I actually do want to be able to analyse my bills. But to mix that in with discretionary spend misses the point. For example, knowing how much I’ve spent on energy for the last X years, average spend per month (or even per kw/h) etc is all really useful info. But the way that Monzo is presenting Trends seems to me to suggest a superficial, at best, understanding of what could be gamechanging here.
Reading this thread is just me going “Wait, this feature isn’t available to the public? Ah they’re going to be so excited 
!”
What does this mean? We support international transfers for all customers? 
I meant natively, with an IBAN, so that you can both send and receive money natively in Monzo.
It was promised, then it didn’t happen, then there was a flirtation with using Natwest as a correspondent bank that also didn’t happen, then a suggestion that it might become a thing for business customers but…(you get the point!)
So basically:
iBANS = any other Fintech (Starling have em)
Cheque Imaging (Any other bank apart from Monzo)
Using Post Office as a bank (any bank apart from Monzo) - so very convenient, I’ll use Natwest for this as it has no limit for paying in Cash, Starling are imposing a tighter limit fee free
Moral of the story - have a high street bank as well
