Also, in their response to BBC watchdog (https://monzo.com/blog/2019/10/18/watchdog-response), they say that they typically unfreeze accounts within 10 minutes:
In the instances that take longer, it’s when Monzo has closed a customers account down. That’s becasue the NCA, the same organisation that ultimately decides the outcome for customers at any bank, has concluded the funds are likely illicit.
Education would be good. Not only in how and why to avoid getting involved in fraudulent or illegal activity in regards to running a bank account, but also to not have all of ones eggs in one basket. Don’t rely solely on just one bank account (apart from the possibility of the account being locked, technical mishaps and cards suddenly not working are always possible).
They didn’t offer my colleague any compensation AFAIK. Worrying posts about Monzo freezing accounts
These sort of quotes from random folks bother me. Mostly because they are simply not grounded in reality. I work here. I have access to the stats. Around 30% of people are getting salaries paid in. And that’s not even the benchmark - for our purposes, a threshold of £1000 coming in every month equals primary use, and that number is higher.
This is much less sensationalist
thankfully Monzo does have a banking licence; some similar apps - like Revolut - do not.
I don’t think they’re Rev fans
This is like deja vu all over again!
Does that means it’s happened 3 times? 
That is still less than 30% of users though. I don’t think the quote is wrong per-se.
I do, because I don’t consider the stat to be “relatively few” - First Direct for example has 1.45 million customers, total - and they’ve been around 30 years. Obviously I don’t know what their salaried account rate is, but even at a high percentage you’re obviously talking similar figures.
And secondly, the part where he says “I don’t see that changing” - well, I mean, I don’t know how to reply to that other than that I do see it changing? As in, I literally see it changing. In the in-bound CASS figures, the tweets and chats that ask us about things like Get Paid Early and tell us they’re switching over because of features like that, etc etc etc.
Obviously, we are working hard to push the percentage much higher and we have a long way to go there. That’s why our key priorities for 2020 are Packaged Accounts, Business Accounts, and increasing our lending book. All of these things contribute to main account usage.
Not disagreeing with that. Still looking forward to Tom doing a U-turn and telling us how amazing packaged accounts are when they launch…
The media will have a field day when they launch with Tom previously saying how poor value they are.
Surely it depends on what’s in the packaged account? If Monzo make them worthwhile for people who found other offerings were poor value, then it’s not a u-turn
Do you think the media care about that? Some parts of the media will use any stick they can to beat Monzo
And all parts of them are out there reading this. Hi guys! How you doing? Do you think you could research rather than regurgitate next time you feel you have to write something about Monzo?
Your problem isn’t with Monzo, it’s with the law.
Literally impossible to separate this from “Customers should be able to launder their illegally acquired money so that it cannot be recovered and returned”.
The law as it stand doesn’t allow for such a distinction. I circle back around to my first point - your problem isn’t with Monzo, it’s with the law. It is incredibly harsh and restrictive, and the penalties for Monzo breaking it would be massive. That considered, it’s no surprise to me that Monzo err on the side of caution. They don’t have the luxury to do otherwise.
My point was how can Monzo push for it it be as fair as possible for their customers.
@Rat_au_van pointed out, that Monzo are dealing with most of the 5% very quickly (most in less than 10 min), which is fantastic.
I was really hoping that next time The Guardian (or elsewhere) publish and article like this, Monzo have the opportunity to correct them, and explain they do x, y & z to make it the best possible customer experience under the circumstances.
I’m not suggesting Monzo should be breaking the law, just pushing to make sure that in the case that a customer is innocent they’ve done the best they can to resolve it quickly, have minimum impact on the customer, and to make sure the customer is compensated fairly if they are found to be innocent. It would certainly sound better than shifting the blame.
How do you determine salary? Or is it a guess?
It’s a feature of the app.
It used to be determined by a regular BACS credit payment
I think the £1000 figure is used as that includes salary paid by faster payments as well
BACS can be anything, though if large it is likely Sallary.
I think the difference between us is that you appear to think Monzo should start doing this, while I see no reason to think that they haven’t been doing this all the time already.
Monzo staff have posted about this before, and what it boils down to is that it’s considered a reasonably safe guess to consider regular large payments as salary, especially if it’s the same sum every time.