Reading some of the recent articles, this doe’s make me wonder.
Just some of the offerings from some of the competition
(there are probably more I have missed):
Revolut- savings products, crypto, share trading, perks, open banking.
Starling- interest on accounts, unlimited ATM withdrawals euro accounts, cheque imaging.
Monese- euro accounts with dedicated card, savings accounts, Avios
All we have heard recently from Monzo is that they are “working on” paid accounts, which is something that many of the other FinTechs already have with varying degrees of success.
Most of those things aren’t things the majority of customers need. Granted plus isn’t either but once that’s launched I expect the pace to pick up again
Yeah I’m expecting plus and then a fairly quick role out of OB features which I think will be the big game changer as the Monzo app feels primed for it more than others
Edit: also side note, but a big reason I went with monzo and people still choose monzo, my friends have it and it makes splitting bills within other people that have monzo super super easy. It’s not new but it’s still a huge winner for Monzo IMO
That is very understandable, but in my area, take up is a lot less.
For example, among my work colleages (approximately 300 people) there are about 10 Monzo users, and of my friends, only 2 users.
Yes, that is not good, but on the other hand, we have found Starling’s card to work flawlessly all over the world.
But then again, we have never had any problems with Monzo’s card (or any of the other FinTech cards) either
I’m concerned with the lack of communication around Plus. I hope it means launch is imminent.
Other than Plus, what is being worked on? Everything feels quite static at the moment with no roadmap other than business accounts (scaling) and USA (too early to throw all resources at).
I know the focus is (rightly) on profitability. Maybe all dev time is going on backend tooling to help with that? But with no roadmap (remembering that Monzo say they default to transparency) it just feels a bit… bleh.
I think that if banking just becomes a feature race then we’re probably all doing it wrong.
Revolut, for instance, can have as many features as they can dig up but (for no reason I can identify or illustrate) I just won’t trust them with my money.
Features are surely a second-string affair when compared to reputation and reliability? So, for Monzo, features aren’t necessarily the area to bolster first. (And “getting left behind” makes a massive assumption about the relative direction of travel of the businesses concerned.)
Other (profitable) banks are catching up with the feature set - banks which people already pay salaries into. Monzo should be keeping ahead before they lose too much ground, or people have less reason to switch.
Somewhere there is a matrix of banking ‘apps’ that have all the possible features, and who offers them.
Not one bank will offer the same as another. Looking at the list above, there are few that interest ‘me’ but I’m sure will interest others (please though, not crypto).
Monzo need to be profitable, hence the focus on Business and Plus accounts which will start to bring income. Once those are established, then they can go back to the ‘feature list’ for the standard account I guess (I’m sure they want to do it all but they, like everywhere, have constraints).
Also, of these three I think the only one Monzo have on their radar will be Starling. Monese is too niche, Revolut is too much of a mess.
As others have said, the bigger issue is how Monzo get big enough fast enough so that the legacy banks don’t swamp them. We are seeing them add instant notifications (Bank of Scotland have this (aka Halifax, aka Lloyds TSB), and the idea of ‘pots’ is bubbling up.
Which leaves me wondering, after the big banks crack those and get to feature parity, what’s the point of Monzo for those who haven’t yet CASS’d across? What would be the appeal?
This is the perennial challenge of startups, eventually someone else (probably bigger) is going to iterate faster than you (because they can) and catch-up. How many streaming services do we have now for example.
For me the challenge Monzo has is scale, how quickly can they realistically achieve it and become profitable. And what can they offer which is actually different (clue: it wont be all that long before the main banks offer all that Monzo does right now) and continues to challenge the market.
@gmclean makes a super valid point. When the big banks crack everything that monzo does, what’s the point of going fullmonzo? They’d have to offer something the others dont, like 24/7 personal customer service there and then, exceptional savings rates, mobile phone/house cover that outstrips the competition.
Personally I feel Monzo is at the beginning of the end of being a challenger, and for me that’s not a bad thing. It has challenged, it has pushed the boundaries, but do I think it will exist in 2-3 years time? Perhaps, but will it be differnt to the main banks? Not as sure
I should also add, before hairs are split, the by feature parity I mean ‘good enough’ feature parity that the effort (as low as it is) to move to Monzo is just too big a barrier.
♂
