Monzo VS Starling "Spying, defections and regrets"

[JustJordds (Jordan)]

This part reminded me of a story I saw about two law firms that have offices either side of a street.

One lawyer from one firm saw another lawyer from the other firm watching something he shouldn’t of and dobbed him in

[simonb]

I must say, I don’t quite understand the angle that this article is going for. Describing it as a “bitter feud” seems like a huge exaggeration to me. We’re all about unity, not sowing seeds of division.
Success in this area helps everyone, and healthy competition is motivating.

I guess that just doesn’t make for as interesting a story in the press.

[HoldenCarver (Nick)]

True story:

Lawyer caught watching porn by rival firm from building across road quits

[JustJordds (Jordan)]

I wasn’t lying! I just didn’t have the link to hand!

@simonb

Describing it as a “bitter feud” seems like a huge exaggeration to me.

Tom left me and now we r no longer fwends

[cookywook (Richard Cook)]

Hi all, I’ve just removed a post containing the article in full.

Please don’t post articles from sites behind a paywall. We could get in trouble

[phildawson (Sorry, I will have to escalate this.)]

[Justin]

@TomCoutts

This is amusing haha. Had no idea they did this

I thought it was cheap and gratuitous. It really turned me off Starling.

[danbeddows (Dan)]

Me too. I didn’t know much about them before that, and it instantly turned me off.

Whomever thought of it was surely was praised internally for having the idea: Riding off the community hype Monzo was generating at the time for their name change, Starling too could get in on that by doing this PR stunt.

Only, it came from a direct competitor (whom I then currently knew very little) and appeared as a thinly veiled attempt at marketing and it immediately made me feel like they’re sly and play dirty.

[karlis]

Bad PR is good PR. Free exposure

[Justin]

The article made me feel like the journalist was a bit lazy. How difficult would it have been to look at the differences between the two challenger banks?

1. The two had had very different approaches to launching their app, with Monzo publishing a beta app before it was completely ready to hundreds of thousands of customers, to allow their feedback to shape it - while Starling developed theirs in secret, and only published it when they felt it was completely ready. This resulted at the time in Monzo gaining hundreds of thousands more customers, but Starling publishing what many felt was then a better app

2. There are some differences in the features and propositions each has launched - e.g. Starling’s free overseas ATM withdrawals

3. There are also differences in how they’ve prioritised product development, with Starling launching business accounts long before Monzo

It seems a shame they didn’t bother to report on any of that.

[TomCoutts (Tom)]

100% Agree with @simonb on this. It is all about unity and competition is only a good thing as I said in the original post. Click-bait fluff pieces like this do no good. I only shared it as was curious on peoples opinions

[luxurytravelled (Ashley)]

Competition is good and helps each other improve. It doesn’t mean you have to be the same to compete.

Just that Starling and Monzo have gone about it in different ways - Monzo’s revenue stream is an individual customer (at the moment), so the easiest way to make money is by scale and supplementary charges. Starling’s model isn’t reliant upon the individual account, but the banking services around it (including business banking), payment services, banking as a service etc.

[Peter_G]

I’ve moved the conversation about paywalls on news articles to a new thread:

Paywalled news articles

There’s a difference between scanning the different headlines within to see if there’s anything that grabs your interest and reading full articles. If you’re reading a full article in the shop I’d expect the paper to then be paid for so you can take it home and read the rest. As you have suggested yourself a little later… There’s a difference between sense checking if it’s what you’re interested in and consuming the content. If it’s the later in my mind you should pay for it.

Jump in over there to continue the conversation!