Fascinating, thanks so much for sharing. If it’s one of a series it could even warrant its own topic! (I have thoughts. But 
! )
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Nice insights! So interesting to read about the early company.
I’m hooked for future parts.
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Agreed, and I remember many of those moments, and that initial feeling of ‘being a part’ of something.
It’s why some of us feel it’s a great shame (even if understandable) that Monzo seem to sometimes drop the ball on merchant information and customer service etc. It’s this that made Monzo, Monzo, quite often and as Tom explained, the small things can retain customers a lot more than larger offers and features.
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Exactly this.
And illustrates the point I was trying to make around user research the other day. Research won’t bring you enriched merchant data, won’t add emojis up instant notifications… These little things, the sheer joy in the app, are essential but need some passion, some drive, some artistry and some vision. User research (and other disciplines) are important. But we need artistic flair as well as reductive science.
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Great read; reminded me of a lot. What personally makes me sad is that the collaborative “Help us build a bank you’d be proud to call your own” is, for the most part, gone. No transparent product roadmap, and the community forum isn’t frequented by nearly as many staff from the product/design side of the business. As can be seen from the article there was this huge push for viral/network effects features, and that’s obviously necessary from a VC-necessitated exponential growth perspective, but even now it feels like there are a lot of these and yet we are missing some core features like… custom categories in joint accounts. There’s a laundry list of stuff like that on the community, which so infrequently seems to get addressed.
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I have noticed a few ads for Monzo pop up recently in my 8ball pool app.
Today’s 15s ad was alongside a 15s ad from some firm called Revolut 
Their main selling point was metal card and retailer cashback.
0.1% really isn’t worth it unless you make thousands each month in debit card payments. In the UK that is.
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Interesting!
The ad states Up to 40% cashback with retailers such as Apple, Nike, and ASOS
Even the graphic shows retailers with 4% cashback.
For the record, I don’t have, nor do I desire, a Revolut card 
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Ah, yeah so the rewards section is general retailer cashback, and then you get 0.1 on all transactions in the UK EU and then 1% outside the EU.
Similar to Lloyds etc who offer cashback at certain places, likely nothing you can’t find elsewhere online.
Yeah that’s the sort of screen they show. I couldn’t screenshot the ads unfortunately
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That is over 2 years old now. Now idea why they are only just tweeting about it now.
Yes, I wonder how much things have changed since for all the banks involved. Maybe @BuiltForMars should repeat the exercise?
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Exciting! I love his work.
I know Revolut’s had a pretty big overhaul or several, so that’s going to be interesting. I think they had a brief UX where it felt like they were on the road to nailing it, but then that ordered complexity descended into anarchy IMO.
Monzo’s had some very good refinements too, so I see them performing better, especially now that much of the half finished stuff has been displaced by new polished things. I’m sure they’ll have something to say about the inconsistencies between old and new things clashing though, especially the merchant data flows.
Hopefully they’ll cover Chase now too to see how they compare.
Have any other banks had any noticeable facelifts or improvements that folks have noticed?
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All I know is that Santander and Nationwide haven’t, but I find their apps really easy to use anyway so not too bothered. Santander have made a few small changes, such as being able to add accounts from other banks, but definitely no massive changes.
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Well…
Monzo, Revolut and another bank have been totally blocked from contactless transactions although it’s not clear if it’s all contactless or just via apple and Google pay, ( I assume people are removing and adding the card to get a new virtual card number)
Can’t be MasterCard compliant but moving to a cash only system for some transactions interesting considering chip and pin still exists.
Transit companies can get access to the real card numbers even with Google and apple pay so how about they do that and block those offending cards if that’s possible to do in real time though.
Wait until they hear the bin on virtual cards.
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Ha. That BIN check resolves to the USA. Have they just banned the pre–paid Monzo cards issued in the States?
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