And that’s fine. You just quoted replies they made specifically about cheques, that’s all I was saying.
Do you wear glasses?
Because Monzo very publicly got told by US regulators that it wasn’t going to get a banking licence
The thing is, that’s not their only way to get a US banking license. They could also do as another challenger bank in the US did and buy an existing bank. Pick a small local bank with only one or a few branches, buy it up, apply to “take over” their license, and while it won’t be instant, it will be easier than applying on their own.
EDIT: The only issue I can see here is that drawing down that one physical branch might cause their existing customers to be quite unhappy. So Monzo would probably be stuck operating that for a while until they can get people transitioned over to app-only banking.
And to everyone else, yes, cheques are very much still a thing in America. This is such a problem that there are entire businesses (Plastiq being the biggest) that will take your card details and write a cheque to most non-card-accepting merchants in exchange for you bearing the card processing fee. Many government agencies, state and federal, will only take cheque (or money order), the first two times in my adult life an airline damaged my bag I was told cheque would be the easiest way to be compensated because corporate policy allowed customer service agents to directly issue compensation cheques up to a certain amount but bank transfers of any amount had to be manually reviewed and approved by the airline’s accounting department, to name a couple of things.
Also, it costs small businesses less to issue cheques than bank transfers. For example, in the States I’ve got an LLC (sole trader with limited liability) and my business banking is with Chase. If I want to pay vendors, contractors, etc, I can order cheques from somewhere like Costco and cost of payments would be 6 cents each (the smallest order of business cheques is $36 for 600). If I want to send bank transfers, Chase charges a basic fee of $25/month for 25 payments, resulting in a cost of $1 per payment for the first 25 and 25 cents per payment thereafter. Some other banks don’t even have the ability to let small businesses send bank transfers, requiring you to turn to a third party to process the transfer. Wise works for this but their variable fees for same-country transfers really add up.
And there’s Revolut Business as an alternative but they hold up a lot more transactions for “compliance” and ask for information that a lot of US businesses are absolutely unused to being asked by their bank for payments.
(please bring Monzo Business to the US)
EDIT: Also, as an American it’s really funny to see people talking about Chase savings and rate-chasers in the same breath, because over here, Chase tried to sell me on opening up a savings account for my business with an interest rate of 0.05%. They aren’t even trying here.
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Great post 
Your explanation on cheques (or should that be checks) in the US is a real eye opener.
It just shows the vast differences in banking in different countries.
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I fear that this is what we have to look forward to once they’ve bought their way into the market and established a dominant position.
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Do you really think that finding a clever workaround to the regulator’s decision is going to go down well with the regulator? 
I literally created an account to say this.
Please update joint accounts.
Specifically, pots linked to Apple Pay cards. The whole reason for having a joint account is to manage money with a partner. So when we go on holiday, it would be great to pay directly from the holiday pot. When we go on dates, it’ll be great to pay from the date pot and when we buy shopping or things for the house, it’ll be great to pay from the house pot.
Not being able to do this makes it so hard to manage our money together.
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Even though I wanted to vote for something else I had to vote for “international expansion” because I’m emigrating to Canada shortly within the year and quite frankly don’t know what I’m gonna do without Monzo and from what I’ve seen, Canadian banks are pretty dire.
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Something like Tangerine is probably the closest you can get to Monzo in Canada!
There are more ideas discussed here:
Revolut are also supposedly coming back to Canada soon.
I feel like I need ranked choice voting lol.
I voted budgeting, because I really want them to finally finish up Trends (add budgeting, left to spend, and whatever else is needed) and get rid of summary. This would help neaten up the app in general too.
However, I think I’d rank joint account separate - I don’t actually have one, or have plans to get one, I just find it wild it’s still not really got a lot of what individual accounts have.
Probably after that I’d maybe go for ‘a redesign’ but I feel that’s a bit strong really for what I actually would like. Mostly I find it fairly intuitive and easy to use. I’d just like Summary to be gone to make it less cluttered, since it’s doubling up, and the plus tab to be removed
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Me too, and also as you say move the plus button from the bottom menu.
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It’s madness, isn’t it?
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Depends on where the roadblock was. Since there’s not much info about why the decision was made to withdraw (or if Monzo was told to withdraw) the application, there’s also not much to indicate whether an alternative approach could be the way to go. The procedure is there, and it’s already been done before (SoFi), so unless Monzo has managed to earn the ire of the entire US financial regulatory apparatus, it shouldn’t be off the table.
Also, @Rivers , as an American who’s experienced banking in Canada-
The closest you’ll get at an actual bank is indeed Tangerine as mentioned by SebH. However, if you don’t mind a prepaid card, Koho or Stack are the way to go, with fewer fees than Tangerine. I’ve personally got an account at Koho and they’ve been fine aside from the 1.5% foreign transaction fee (waived if you’re willing to sign up for Premium, and unlike Revolut or Monzo Premium you can pay a month at a time with no minimum, so you can choose to only sign up when you need it). However, Koho supports both direct deposit and direct debits for bills and such, and I’m not sure if Stack supports direct debit. Koho also supports e-transfers (local instant bank transfer system) in both directions while I think Stack can only receive e-transfers, and only from your own account at another bank.
EDITED to combine two comments into one.
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No, the information is quite clear, as per the article in the FT:
Monzo has withdrawn its application for a US banking licence after it was told by regulators it was unlikely to be approved
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We’re going to have to disagree on the definition of “clear” then. From what I can see there’s a wariness against online-only banks in general (note the others listed in the article who have tried and withdrawn) securing their own licenses as new banks, but the way I see it, if SoFi can use the “take over and acquire license” approach, there’s no reason Monzo shouldn’t evaluate it as a possibility (although it could turn into a Discover Bank type situation- they took over Greenwood Trust in Delaware, secured a banking license, started offering online-only banking some time later, and I’m not sure “stuck” would be the right word, but they’re still operating that one physical branch).
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I think your analysis is accurate there. It’s always been much more difficult for new banks in general to secure their own licenses in the US compared to, for example, the U.K. (but also even the EU and Canada). This is because other places reformed banking regulation to encourage competition and embrace fintechs in a way the US never really quite did.
Add to this the generally pervasive “mood” of scepticism towards fintechs and it seems they are given a particularly hard time.
The “acquire a license” approach is effectively the only realistic way - but, of course, it requires you to reach significant scale first as a non-licensed bank in order to be able to afford to acquire even a small existing bank and it can be difficult to gain customers when you “aren’t a real bank” yet. So it’s a bit of a difficult route but can work out well in the longer term.
We can do both of these with IFTTT 
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Be nice to have it built in. I’ve not actually ventured to IFTTT yet. May take a peak.
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