Monzo in the media

I seem to remember hearing that “Bank Eleven” was actually bandied about as a possible early name :joy:

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They didn’t part ways. Tom was apparently fired.

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I’d like to hear more about this. I’ve only ever heard he left.

Was it more a

“I’m quitting to start my own company?”

“You can’t quit because I’m firing you!”

“lols”

Tom skips away with a significant number of staff.

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Monzo mentioned in a Financial Times article about Wirecard.

https://www.ft.com/content/7c466351-02fe-4d66-85a1-53d012de7445

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Seeing as we are not meant to share chunks from newspapers, four main points, in my own words, related to Monzo from my reading of it:

  • Figures are from 2017
  • Wirecard generated almost all their income in 2017 from several dozen of their supposed hundreds of thousands of customers
  • Monzo was one of that income generating group
  • Monzo is no longer using Wirecard (again the data was from 2017, back in prepaid days)
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4 posts were merged into an existing topic: Termination of appointment of Tom Blomfield as a Director

MSE have reported on Plus

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And this is the takeaway for me:

Overall, unless you’re desperate for virtual cards and custom budgeting categories or are a die-hard Monzo fan wanting a holographic card, it’s not worth getting Monzo Plus for now.

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Yeah I was pretty much of the same conclusion to be fair

Agreed, although there is some value in having everything combined in one app, effectively a convenience/simplicity fee.

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After that, you’ll be signed up for a minimum of three months, costing £15

That’s not a bad minimum term as it goes. On the surface the value seems fair, and there’s a lot I like about the offering that adds value to me. I think £5 is a fair price for that value. I got two months free, so if it turns out not to be as good value to me as it looks on the surface, I’m not locked into an annual contract.

It’s clear a lot of hard work went into building this, and given that they’re not opposed to locking software features behind the account, means there is plenty of room for the product to evolve and improve over time, adding even greater value. This is a very solid foundation to launch with. Well done, Monzo.

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That’s the one thing I’d potentially want. But it’s counterbalanced by the (admittedly tiny) possibility that if my Monzo account was ever to be compromised, access would be available to all my accounts. I have separate accounts partly so that all my eggs aren’t in one basket.

To accept that balance, Id save 10m per day and spend £60pa.

1.6p a minute :slight_smile: 20 days and you would have enough for a non fat skinny latte, but with no choc chips on the top

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Completely agree with that. Other competitors’ equivalents (ie: N26 back in the day, or Revolut), would tie you in for a minimum of 12 months I believe

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Conclusion

Monzo appears to be trying to go down the Banking-as-a-Service or the ‘freemium’ route, rather than making money in a more traditional way for a bank, by lending money.

I’m not saying that’s a bad thing either, but I’m just not sure how long I (or anyone else) will pay for a service and features that other digital banks already offer me, and often for free.

There are whisperings that all Monzo’s new features might be Monzo Plus-exclusives, or at least exclusive for a while, so maybe (hopefully) it’ll get a little better?

This has occurred to me. What would non Plus customers think if 90% of development effort went into Plus?

I imagine they’d leave

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Most customers will have very little awareness of how much development time goes into the basic product vs the Plus tier and, might not even care if they were aware. (I own a Focus. Should I care how much time and resource Ford spent developing the Focus vs the Fiesta or the Mondeo?)

As with any product, Monzo need to make sure that their investment in Plus delivers returns. If it does, then the product will stand on its own two feet, and that’s all that matters.

(You could, perhaps, picture the opposite scenario, in which Plus subscriptions are so successful that they then end up subsidising and propping up the free/basic tier. In this example, you might wonder how sustainable the free tier was.)

What customers will judge, however, is whether Plus is worth the £5 price tag over the basic account, and whether Monzo (whether basic or Plus) offers more than other banks’ current accounts.

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The older features need some love and polish to bring their experience up to par with plus. They should be for everyone, and personally are things I would like to see happen before they start pouring out new features for plus, because those fundamentals effect all of us.

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So I’ve never been a fan of paywalling features. But if we get a trickle-down effect - where Plus features become free as others catch up - then I can see it as worthwhile.

The logic is that Monzo will at have a (profit) motive in making advances and providing good and innovative features - and moving older ones to the free tier to compete with others and to keep non fee-paying customers on board.

That’s the theory at least. Keen to see how it pans out.

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