Monzo international expansion - where and why?

Other than Ireland and the US, the truth is that we haven’t even considered the scope of anywhere else.

The US is the main one we are looking at right now, but it’s a huge amount of work, so it won’t happen overnight…

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I hear it’s pretty difficult to get a nationwide banking license aka a de novo federal licence too..

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Sorry but US, CAN, AUS, NZ sounds like the same old cliche that inspired Britain’s business thinking for a century or more.:joy:

The growth, enthusiasm, excitement and optimism is in Asia and this is where Monzo should expand. The Anglophone world has stagnated and gets by on debt! :cry:

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Asia is on the radar too :muscle:

Although I can understand why Monzo’s keen to expand to the US too - no language barrier a huge market, made up of relatively well off citizens, a fairly good ecosystem of FinTech providers (for the marketplace) & their banking system is in serious need of disruption..

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Where did you get that info from?

The screenshot you linked came up with an error.

@simonb has literally just said the opposite?

I mention where I got it from in the post that I linked to :man_facepalming: the link to the crowdfunding pitch deck has been taken down now.

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OK, it’s just that someone from Monzo has said one thing, and you quote yourself (with a broken link), which directly contradicts what Monzo staff have said :man_shrugging:

I was genuinely curious to see the link.

Edit - Link works when going to the thread (rather than clicking the link).

I didn’t say I didn’t believe you @alexs, I was genuinely curious as to what your link was.

If you want to believe that I just made that up, that’s fine by me :slight_smile: but my record in this community shows that I’m not in the habit of doing that..

And I don’t think it is contradictory, there’s just different timescales for expansion to different parts of the world. Presumably @simonb was talking about Monzo’s plans in the nearer term. The plans to expand into Asia may be less concrete.

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i would also defend @alexs as I feel he has integrity and would not invent fake facts!

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I think it’s fairly obvious if they want to be a bank for 1bn+ people expansion to Asia, US, Australia, anywhere for that matter is inevitable at some point in the future, even if distant.

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No one was claiming he invented anything :slightly_smiling_face: He was defending himself from an accusation no one made.

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The screenshot Alex is referring to is from our late 2016 investment deck - before we even had our UK banking license! It also mentions that we could do a US offering in 6 months :joy: Little did we know.

It basically said that with capital we could do X, Y and Z. But this was a very optimistic statement made by a very enthusiastic new startup who hadn’t even exited Beta let alone making serious international plans :wink:

Long-term we’d like to be everywhere of course! But for now, what I said above still stands.

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Thanks for clarifying Simon! Always good to dream big!

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I’m interested in what Monzo’s plans are here - going state by state would be a pain, but as you say the de novo licence appears to be prohibitively difficult - last thing I read (from memory, so might be wrong) was that there had only been low single digit authorisations…

(By interested, I mean reading the blog post about cracking the States after the they launch there - I think it’s too early to be sharing details now!)

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It’d be helpful if people stopped linking to posts from the distant past. The other day while discussing credit cards, someone linked to Tom Blomfield’s post from August 2016 where he basically said that credit cards won’t happen. Fine, but what do we know about how he feels about Monzo credit card in August 2018? :joy::joy:

Keynes once said: When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do? :rofl:

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While more recent sources would be great, I think an older source is better than no source, surely? :thinking: I thought it was a useful reminder of what we have already been publicly told. But as you say, things do change.

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This is the difficulty with online forums - Old information can be repeated, and taken as gospel - When in fact, it’s completely false (or more accurate, out of date).

I think I agree with you that SOME information from the company (Monzo in this case), is better than none - Even if it is potentially a little old and out of date.

If anything, it usually results in the company clarifying the current position - Like Simon has here.

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Maybe you would be able to find this, but I swear there was a blog post/ section on the website before the revamp earlier this year about Monzo and a brief mention about their long-term expansion goals. Europe/ US were mentioned, as well as tackling Asia through Singapore, which was the reason why I remembered it so vividly. Obviously it’s outdated info right now but idk if anyone remembers it?

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your eyes didn’t deceive you - in the linked article the Crowdfund investment deck is at the bottom of the article with reference to Singapore

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Does anyone know anything about Canadian banking regulation - or banking in Canada generally? :canada:

Canada seems (from what I know, at least) to be quite quiet in terms of fintech and seems to have incumbents and a banking system a bit like the UK. And enough population to make it worthwhile. It could also serve as a beachhead into francophone European counties being bilingual.

Could it make a good next target for Monzo? (After the US :us: and Ireland :ireland:, obvs).

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