They did in the U.K. too, but as soon as they realised the U.K. market was different to the EU market, they were out. As soon as a rich donor has a word in Trumps ear, European challenger banks will find so much red tape introduced that they will fail or be forced to retreat.
Thatās a cynical view, N26 appears to have left because weāre leaving the EU and it would have meant getting a U.K. banking licence. They obviously decided it wasnāt profitable as they were interested in other markets. Before we decided to leave they could open their app to any country in the EU with relativity little cost and no extra banking licenses.
As for Monzo and others making it in the states. There is no doubt itās a different market, different challenges and some big players in existing market but Monzo are investing in the US so I donāt see why that would be a problem.
Iām not going to spend lots of time on this but considering theyāre successful in other countries and theyāre starting in the US, a market probably much more difficult and different than than the UK I doubt it.
Also they already had the software and all the key factors for the UK market, so they could have just grown that quite easily.
Iām not saying market forces in the UK didnāt play a part but I donāt personally believe that was the only factor or the main factor. They did quite well in getting started and up and running, and theyāre successful in other countries.
Despite being on slightly shaky ground, Monzo became the most switched-to current account for the first time ever in Q4 2019 with 20,843 net switches.
I wouldnāt really call it that, seems a bit harsh to me but glad they did acknowledge that achievement
This is from the Financial Times this morning.
Be interesting to see if that is the case
Whilst itās a difficult climate at the moment, Iād still have thought Monzo would be raising cash at the similar levels to previous raises
Iām not surprised there is a discount but didnāt expect it to be 40%
The irony of promoting a site which rips off the product of other, legitimate, companies to highlight concern for another struggling company has, presumably, not escaped everyone.
I thought the article was pretty fairly balanced.
I wish they launched Plus to help them reach profitability. 
I donāt think itās a big deal, in reality when these firms go public their valuations will be in line with each other. Right now circumstances are dictating things, N26 and Revolut were very lucky to get through in time.
Monzo surviving is more important than a paper loss on valuation, by the time they go public little will have changed other than slight dillution. Itās a 5% stake at a Ā£1.5bn valuation. Not the end of the world.
if you had had the chance to sell yesterday and today, and you needed to sell. Yeah I can imagine thatād be disappointing, but you never would have been able to, so thereās no point worrying. Itās not a big deal in the long term
Also (Edit)
If this economy continues to decline as itās expected, and the markets start pricing reality (which looks pretty terrible) youāll be glad monzo managed to raise anything at all at a high multiple
Also (Edit
If you think about it like this it basically just means monzo sold a 5% stake for Ā£80m instead of c.Ā£125m⦠so itās out of pocket Ā£45m on where it could have been⦠Only VCs that have to record profit and loss on investments will suffer in the short term.
sure does make a great headline for the great unread masses though⦠
I wasnāt talking about the content. I was commenting about the privilege of using plagiarised content to comment on another struggling industry.
I think it was Chamath Palihapitiya who said in the current climate that even the best will have to āprice takersā and not price makers.
Valuations will come and go, and the long term value of the bank will be seen in 10 years and not now
Monzo has come out top in Fairer Financeās customer experience rankings.
Interesting.
I love Monzo but with all the senior management changes in the past 6 months, I do wonder whether their hiring policy was way off or there is some internal obstacle to getting projects done.
To have the head of a revenue generating area of the business leave to an unheard of company within 2 years of joining looks pretty poor form to me.
I think itās option 3 - as Monzo moves from ātech startupā to ābig bankā, the type of staff needed are different. My own observation of this changes are that ātech orientedā staff are being replaced by ābank orientedā staff. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Particularly in the case of making money, it reads to me as a shift from āmaking something workā to āmaking money out of something.ā
I canāt see Tim Trailorās job history on LinkedIn (as they seem to insist you log in now), but the fact heās moved to a start-up speaks says to me that he thinks his expertise is best used in getting businesses started (or thatās the aspect of business he most enjoys).