I think you’ve just proved every one of my points.
Monzo is a bank - Not your best friend.
I want my bank to have some serious business sense.
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Please elaborate.
Nor do I think they’re my best friend. It’s just I’m a pretty reasonable person and I can understand quite plainly why they would introduce fees. I’m not still upset about it mid 2018.
Your right, what was I thinking. I am still surprised to see a business with no business sense valued at £280M 
must have been a fluke.
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“I want my bank to have some serious business sense.”
and the serious business sense was because of the astronomical growth they realised they were going to run out of money because a few users were costing the company a lot of money because they were using it purely as a travel card … if they kept their T and Cs the same - so they changed them - I would call that good business sense - its all well documented here on the forum the reasons for the decision to change because of a few that were abusing the facility
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I’m not repeating my points, they are there for all to read.
I also don’t want to escalate this into a tit for tat conversation. However you did jump to the defence of a bank… Last time I checked, I wasn’t speaking falsehoods - Just recapping the facts.
Like I said, Kudos to Monzo for creating such a loyal customer base (as you asked, I was around from near the beginning, and I was responding to @anon95680666 comment).
As for the “business sense” comment - It was probably a touch harsh. I want Monzo to fly, and appreciate that unexpected growth is going to cause issues. However, getting customers to merrily go along with a change away from one of their USP’s (regardless of WHY), is even more impressive.
No where else could a bank ask customers not to withdraw cash (because it costs the bank money), and have a positive response.
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If I could heart this a thousand times I would.
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impressive eh the new generation of caring, sharing customers in a caring sharing business 
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" and I was responding to @anon95680666 comment "
ditto - its a forum people agree , disagree , half agree , wouldn’t be much of a forum if nobody replied or you had to wait 2 hours for any interaction
edit - one thing that does seriously impress me though is how unabusive this forum is - mostly, and how quickly abuse is dealt with
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I’m not defending them. Like I said above, my opinion happened to differ to yours. By the very paradigm of this conversation, I could say you’re on the offensive, a Starling loyalist etc. “It’s so impressive that Starling has managed to create such a loyal following that they would attack Monzo wherever possible”. Look - I’m not saying that, and that isn’t what I think, but you’re posing that exact thing in reverse here. Because my opinion happens to differ to yours does not mean I am defending them.
That’s the thing though, you weren’t, you were muddying in your own perception to the facts. I think that’s whats cause me to “defend”. You said:
The word “duped” is telling of your thoughts. You believe it was intentional deception. Whilst I believe they received growth at a rate they did not foresee. If only facts were stated and your opinion not muddying, I would not have commented.
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@nickh you make good points along with inducing equally good responses.
What I would add is that I joined Monzo just 6 months ago on the understanding that the service was still in beta mode. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t this mean that the product is subject to change and even more so at the point you joined which was alpha? Therefore, it’s understandable for changes to be made and accepted when you accept you’re essentially in the testing, iterative phase of a journey.
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I’ve been a Mondo customer since the first 3000 or so of us we’re beta testing back in 2016, and a Starling customer since day one.
I currently think Monzo’s ethos as a business is more to my taste than Starling, with transparency and the CEO’s vision at Monzo leaps ahead of Starling.
However, I’m torn about the 3% foreign ATM charge. As a traveller it sucks. As a shareholder, I think Tom played a blinder by cajoling the forum to back quick profitability over long-term (lower) cost.
But I do wonder if Starling have managed to find a holy grail: By subsiding back-end banking features (plug in to Faster Payments and providing government contracts) they seem to be able to keep foreign ATM fees free.
Which all means I’ll use Monzo for everything, and Starling to withdraw money abroad.
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Agree with the rest of your post, but I’m not to sure abbot this. I think this is a short term good thing for Starling - and may even end up being a good long term thing - but I think it fundamentally changes the Monzo vs Starling question. We know that they come from the same starting point, but I think the points of deviation are beginning to show.
I think that while this might be a success for Starling, their focus and proposition might become confused. I also thing (strangely enough) it makes them more of an acquisition target - maybe for someone like MasterCard themselves.
For what it’s worth, I think that platforms are the thing that could become the holy grail (I witter about it here).
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they seem to be able to keep foreign ATM fees free.
I am not sure about this. I still think it’s mainly a marketing tactic and the fees would arrive should their card become as popular as the Monzo prepaid.
This isn’t happening because the “travel card” craze is over, as Monzo prepaid and Revolut captured most of that market. If both of those disappear overnight you’ll see tons of people run over to Starling and the fees would be there next day.
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I don’t think so: starling are one of the very few who offer unlimited free international atm withdrawals. Neither monzo nor revolut match that.
People who really care about travel cards will already find starling much more attractive than Monzo or revolt.
I can’t see how monzo or revolut disappearing would change the market dynamic that significantly.
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Yes, as a regular traveller Starling is more attractive than Monzo. The £300 ATM limit (no matter where you are) is certainly helpful.
I still don’t see how it makes sense for Starling to keep those ATM-heavy customers. ATMs are a loss leader, even if we assume Starling makes enough profit elsewhere to offset that, I still don’t see what those customers bring to the table. Starling would be better off without them IMO.
I would hope if they ever thought about foreign charging (I don’t think they will tho) that before they made a bank wide decision, they would first filter out user like the one above and close/restrict their account.
Like I said though, I think cash will die out quicker than the ATM charges will hurt them.
Well I think it makes sense as a USP. (Maybe not quite unique, but most certainly a selling point.) Everyone needs one of those, and sometimes it makes perfect sense to take losses on your USP if they are offset through profits elsewhere.
they would first filter out user like the one above and close/restrict their account
You mean closing accounts for using ATM withdrawals, while still offering free ATM withdrawals?
If ATMs become a problem, they need to come up with a limit and apply it to all accounts. They could make the limit so that it only affects really high usage.
Closing accounts who use a feature of said account is a bad way to go and might even backfire in terms of PR.
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While a large number of cash withdrawals has severe impact on say a prepay where salaries are not paid into an account, when an account is receiving BACS salary deposits there is a different scenario. When a prepay was seen as a travel card and hammered by people on gap year world tours, this is different from a standard bank account when foreign withdrawals are once a year on a 2 week summer holiday to somewhere not as exotic.
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