Generally speaking, hate is a word that fanatics use to detract from reason.
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Why must this spill over into every topic?
These are banks. It’s not a Holy war.
Let’s move on (and stop, repeatedly, coming back to it).
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Betteridge’s law would apply here - the answer to the title is ‘no’ and one doesn’t even need to read the article.
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Because stories about us get lots of clicks.
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It appears that the same writer also wrote an article titled “Will the rise of veganism turn us into a nation of current account switchers?”
I am therefore looking forward to the article, “Will Michael Fotis write anything for money?”
I know, I know, that’s possibly an overly cynical view. And underneath the provocative headline of the Monzo article, he does give credit to Monzo for their impressive customer numbers, and says they’ll “probably survive”.
I’m not sure Bounce Back loans are as important as he makes them out to be, though - I think a bigger factor may be that Monzo haven’t been able to put as many resources into building business banking as they’d like given they weren’t able to get any of the funding they went for (and several of the banks that did give funding ended up handing it back).
Also I think he overstates payment holidays - “In fact, with relatively easy to access payment holidays […], our large banks have acquitted themselves quite well” - as, at this point in time, neither he nor the banks quite know how much of that is going to end up bad debt.
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Just on that, wasnt there going to be a new set of bids for reallocation of those that were given back?
Did monzo apply for those?
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That’s what they said, which struck me then and still strikes me now as the stupidest possible way forward. Because then you’re spending money to run the whole process again as well as asking all the banks interested to again spend a whole bunch of time and money taking part. I still think it would’ve made more sense to go back and look at the pitches from the banks that missed out, and seen if any of them were still interested.
I haven’t heard of what progress was made since they said there’d be a new bid. Am unsure if it all flew under the radar, or if it’s yet another thing that has been kicked down the road because of COVID-19.
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Another rightwing demolition job, with an eye to the establishment advertisers, that rehashes quite a lot of stuff that has been in the public domain for quite a while. Like most of the Spectator’s output, it’s what their feeble, bigoted readership want to read, in essence.
The comparison with and non-existent analysis of why RBS’s Bó project failed - because there was nothing on offer with this account - tells me all I need to know about Fotis’s paper thin research on this (effectively “Eds, will this do?”)
The money went to Virgin, Clearbank, and a bunch of startups you won’t have heard of.
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I dont know, id say the business plans have changed alot since those initial pitches so a fresh approach would be more suited to show conservatively how they plan to utilise the money best.
Thats actually ludicrous 
Just seen the list of recipients and i dont understand how they could have been seen as a good place to give the money.
Number and value of grants:
£70 million – Metro Bank PLC*
£100 million – Starling Bank Limited
£60 million – ClearBank Ltd
*£50 million returned by Metro Bank PLC in February 2020
Number and value of grants:
£50 million*
£15 million – Investec Bank plc
£15 million – The Co-operative Bank
*£50 million returned by Nationwide Building Society in April 2020
Number and value of grants:
£10 million – Atom Bank PLC
£10 million – The Currency Cloud Group Ltd
£10 million – iwoca Ltd
£10 million – Modulr Finance Limited
Number and value of grants:
£5 million – Codat Limited
£5 million – Fluidly Limited
£5 million – Form3 Ltd
£5 million – Funding Options Limited
£5 million – Swoop Finance Limited
Number and value of grants:
£5 million – Funding Xchange Ltd
£5 million – Onfido Limited
£2.5 million – Codat Limited
£2.5 million – ezbob Ltd
£2.5 million – Fractal Labs Ltd
£2.5 million – Previse Ltd
Number and value of grants:
£35 million – Virgin Money UK PLC
£25 million – ClearBank Ltd
£10 million – Ebury Partners Limited
£10 million – MarketFinance Limited
In saying that was unaware that Dozens got some money? think they are modulr?
What are your criteria then?
The usual government criteria is “Are you owned by a Tory donor, or are you run by the spouse of a Tory MP.”
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Dozens is Project imagine. Modulr is their current banking partner (because they’re not a licensed bank), but they’re moving to ClearBank imminently.
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Scroll up a bit 
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In a comment to Sifted, Monzo’s CEO TS Anil said Nowell’s departure had been amicable:
“We’re extremely grateful to Lisa who’s been an integral part of Monzo and helped us build a world-class risk and compliance team. She continued to lead our risk and compliance function and support our executive team to hire a successor.”
Not much to see then
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Lisa Nowell has been replaced today by banking veteran Iain Laing, who has previously served at leading UK institutions including TSB Bank, Santander and Nationwide
Good for Monzo… as a bank
As compared to?
Is that to not quite excel?
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