Reading over the thread it seems that while people understood that Monzo wanted to be a bank from day one, they didn’t realise that would mean Monzo would be ditching pre-paid cards in place of current accounts.
That’s my take away from this.
Fair point - but that doesn’t detract from the fact that the card was their only initial offering and it’s the marketing around this (and huge hype re the no fee travel element) which snared most subscribers.
Ditching prepay cards for a card that does exactly the same thing with extra features…
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Yeah but they don’t want another full bank account, they want a pre-paid card. I don’t think that’s unreasonable. Plus they have ATM fee’s abroad which didn’t exist when they signed up.
I did, and I’m happy. Doesn’t mean that those upset are being irrational.
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I’ve never seen any numbers that support this. There are a lot of people that signed up for reasons other than use during travel. Without a survey of intentions, who knows what ‘most’ people signed up for.
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I think you’re really not getting this. You might not think that this matters, but you’re asking your customers, us Luddite simpletons, to upgrade the level of trust they put in you significantly. The fact that you don’t think this matters really matters. The decision to get a prepaid card with a cool app that I can just lose is very easy. Asking, telling me to bank with you is a far bigger step and the feeling of being bounced into it is alarming. I found out about this because a friend told me, not through any communication from Monzo. My friend was angry too.
Being repeatedly told that a prepaid card is the same as a current account also alarms me because clearly they are not. Sure I can recreate the same user experience, but the security implications are not the same. Again just telling me not to worry about that alarms me further.
Receiving hostility after raising these concerns isn’t the behaviour I’d expect from a bank. You are a bank. You trade on reputation. Being professional in client interactions is a huge part of this. Being condescended to about whether I’m afraid of ‘bankiness’ does not increase my faith in you. A bank needs to take my money more seriously than I do, not less.
I hope you can learn lessons from this about communicating with your customers, taking them along with you and allaying their concerns rather than poopooing them in a fashion that stokes these concerns further.
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Hey Mike! This definitely shouldn’t have happened. Could you check your email from yesterday or today and also open your Monzo app? Your Monzo app should have been telling you every day for the last few weeks, so please let me know if that isn’t the case and we’ll take a look 
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The “hostility” was potentially me, sorry, and I am not an employee. Most people commenting here are long-time Monzo users. The Monzo employees such as Tristan are clearly marked with an icon and “Monzo” (… and a calmer style of posting).
I still don’t quite understand your concerns about security (any money you have on your card is in fact more secure on the updated version) and being asked to bank with Monzo - they’re absolutely not asking you to do this, or use them as your primary account, or anything like that (though you can if you wish).
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Just to reiterate the what Stephen said, the vast majority of responses here (and on the forum generally) are from ‘normal’ people, not Monzo staff. I’ve not seen any hostility or condescension from Monzo staff posts (those people with the 
logo in the bottom right of their photo).
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I think if ‘they’ can’t give a reason for it then it is by definition ‘unreasonable’ 
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Could you expand on this? How is it not the same? As far as I’m aware Monzo holds the same info about me now as they always have. Plus my money is now fscs protected so surely the security is better?
I’m just trying to understand these security issues as I can’t see any and am quite security conscious in general
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Not necessarily. Unreasonable doesn’t only mean ‘without reason.’ It could be read to mean unacceptable or unfair.
ok - so let’s not nit pick and change "most’ to “a lot” and it’s still the same thing…
what else did they have to offer at the time? promise of a current account in the future? well that’s really going to get me excited…not…
agreed we don’t have numbers but let’s be serious for a moment - it was a (to be discontinued in it’s original form) loss-leader to get people hooked…
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If you lose a pre-paid card, providing it doesn’t get used for criminal activities, you could just ignore it and move on with life.
With a CA debit, if you lose it, you’ll want to get it blocked because there’s a whole current account tied to that card. It has the potential to put you into a costly unauthorised overdraft, that without the app, you’d be completely unaware of (unless Monzo plans to add postal and SMSnotifications for unauthorised OD). Plus a CA marks your credit file with ‘another’ current account, some people don’t want that.
Maybe. Or maybe they simply underestimated how many customers would use it. Either way, they should’ve been clearer from the outset.
I believe you get an immediate notification when overdrawn
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This is correct 
We’ll always keep you notified.
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Monzo decline payments that would cause your balance to go into the negative.
The exception is if you’ve applied for an overdraft. Which is optional, and anybody who wants to use the new card like the old, won’t need an overdraft, and therefore won’t have this worry.
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Is this via push notifications only? or does it include SMS?
This’ll be by push notification. @danbeddows is also absolutely spot on, though; we’ll reject payments that would take you into an overdraft, unlike legacy banks who may allow a payment to go through and charge you a “paid transaction fee”.
We want our customers to be in control of their money, so unless you explicitly opt in to an overdraft, we won’t force you into one.
The only exception (as I think was mentioned earlier) is with “offline” transactions that we have to honour, however we provide a £20 buffer wherein you won’t be charged any fees. Generally, the rare transaction that will present “offline” will be within this buffer limit.
(Sorry for any grammar mistakes here - typing on my phone whilst walking isn’t easy for me 
)
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