This is an important part of the point, but not the only part. As I’ve said already, it would have been way less administration work if the money came from VCs, but we made provisions explicitly for crowdfunding too.
Other challengers have given out free shares in their company. Each customer would receive 1 share each or something. I think it’s hardly worth the effort and doesn’t enable the company to raise capital in the process.
I’m not disagreeing that the main point of a crowdfunding round is to raise money, but your assessment that this was the only motivation is not a fair one, in my view. If it was, I suspect Monzo would have just accepted funds only from VCs.