That’s three quarters of the Telegraph workforce.
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How many people in the group are just intrigued like me? I’d suggest a fair few!
“Our most recent research found that relatively few Monzo customers use it as their main current account, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.”
Might this be part of the reason that monzo are blocking so many accounts?
My salary gets paid into my account, and my spending comes out through direct debits and debit card transactions through the month. All pretty transparent.
If you use monzo like a spending card, you’re far more likely to have large, suspicious transfers coming in, maybe from partners or parents (accounts under different names), and have erratic spending patterns (eg long dormant periods and then heavy foreign spending).
I wonder if this pattern of usage is creating more problems for monzo than banks would normally expect.
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I agree. I think the absence of a salary being paid in means there’s much less context to the spending, which must result in a lower level of confidence for Monzo that everything is in order.
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I see what you mean.
I’d hope that the Fraud-o-Matic detection algorithm is sophisticated enough to determine the difference between someone receiving funds to buy a car and criminal activity, though.
Also, someone using Monzo as a spending account might be no more likely to have erratic incomings and outgoings than anyone else. I use Monzo as a spending account, for example, and they’d have no idea if I was in receipt of nefarious funds, because they wouldn’t see them.
Another article about customers accounts being locked. 
While the article quotes Monzo’s response in regard to “tipping off”, the article seems to leave readers with a very negative impression of Monzo.
I’ve seen Monzo’s response saying that in 95% of cases this is the correct decision, but what about the other 5%!.. How are the consequences of locking a customers money resolved once the customer is cleared? If they have to miss work / incur penalties / borrow money / can’t fulfil their commitments due to not being able to travel, etc, then I would expect they should be more than fairly compensated. Is this the case, and if so why are the Guardian not talking about how Monzo followed up when they were wrong? It’s fantastic that Monzo’s normally right, but what about when they’re not right?!
Is there really nothing that can be done to support these customers while their accounts are locked? How can Monzo go above and beyond to support their customers with the basic’s when they are only 95% sure that they’ve done something wrong: Food, shelter, travel, etc? If the customer has dependants, how do Monzo make sure they are not affected? @tom it would be be pretty awful for Monzo to have to come out and say they were 95% sure, but made a mistake and as such it impacted these kids… …(imagine your own ending).
If there really is nothing under the current rules that Monzo can do, then what are Monzo doing to challenge / address this rule? How are Monzo going to go above and beyond? 
And back onto the 95% of correctly justified locked accounts…
From the 700 complaints reported to Resolver, how many of these were proven to be justified? 95% If so can Resolver / the Guardian be required to explain this?
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Yeah it is quite concerning to see continued bad press around this. I believe Monzo are being unfairly treated, but wonder what the company is doing to address the concerns / bad PR
What do you think they should do? I notice you make no suggestion yourself. By all means show us how simply Monzo could handle this situation (within the regulatory framework).
Won’t someone please think of the children? 
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It may sound harsh, but Monzo can’t let emotion come in to play. People lie. The amount of crime that would be carried out if everything was waved through because of ‘the children’ hardly bears thinking about.
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Your point has always bothered me, whenever it’s been brought up it gets shut down with a ’ it’s the law’ and ‘its usually right’
I don’t think alot of people understand the repercussions of not having money for a few weeks, especially the people making the rules.
I don’t think this is a monzo issue at all, but a regulation one.
There is one part that is concerning, when they agree to give the money back but close the account, they say 2-4 weeks for the money back , this is way too long it should be within 1 or 2 days, by giving the money back they are saying there is no evidence of criminal behaviour and keeping that money for 2-4 weeks is not acceptable.
To your compensation point, I did see someone saying they got £750 compensation after it was frozen for a few weeks, but I don’t know how common or the circumstances.
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Having your money locked down is like saying you’re guilty until proven innocent. Customers should be able to eat, travel, and meet basic commitments until proven guilty.
Yep ‘but the kids’… yep I’m sure is the line they all use, but what about when Monzo are wrong (currently 5% of the time). Not suggesting they should wave the whole case through, I’m suggesting blocking peoples ability to do anything is unfair.
I did make a suggestion at the end. Sure I don’t know the regulatory framework, but if the framework is really that restrictive, then I suggested they publicly challenge the framework.
Articles like this one in the Guardian keep cropping up and it would be great if Monzo could be at the forefront of trying to help the 5% of their customers that wrongly go through this process. When in the future The Guardian run a similar article about Monzo having locked an innocent customers account and the knock on implications, it would be great if the customer were saying that while it was a total pain at the time, Monzo did a better job than any other bank would have at resolving it.
@HoldenCarver this is not about emotion, it’s about being fair. Like @kolok mentions “It’s the law” is an excuse that just shifts the blame to the regulator.
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What Tom said after Watchdog was 95% were cast iron definite certainties and the rest raised enough flags to be looked at. Of that 5% we don’t know how many are false positives
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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
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This is like deja vu all over again!
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Does that means it’s happened 3 times? 
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That is still less than 30% of users though. I don’t think the quote is wrong per-se.