Thought it was really interesting that Tom is caring more about not having built something that people love, or something compelling, as opposed to big incumbent banks or big tech firms muscling in.
On that note, I love Monzo as much as most people on here, but as someone who’s been a customer since the very beginning, development of the app has definitely slowed recently. The excitement, and buzz has been fading for me. Because when I talk to friends about Monzo, there still isn’t anything (apart from forex) that makes them say, “yes, that’s different, and that’s a compelling reason to switch from Natwest etc.”.
In my eyes, Monzo is basically at the stage whereby they can do what the other big banks do. I really hope that now current accounts are out of the way, and they have got a better handle on customer costs (ending prepaid, ATM withdrawals etc.), they can get back to what made them exciting in the first place, building cool and different stuff, solving problems people didn’t know were problems because they’ve just accepted the status quo for too long – creating buzz.
I appreciate it’s obviously not that simple. There are loads of people that want Apple Pay for example (which I’m not that fussed about), or Android parity, which I can see takes priority and probably for good reason. But personally, I want those reasons to convince my mates to switch, and I can’t wait for all the integrations, to be sold travel insurance when I land in a foreign country, updating spending tabs and the new targets features, overdrafts (both of which seem like they’ve been in the works, or right around the corner for sometime) that’s when Monzo gets compelling.
Once Monzo gets to an even keel with those “normal” functionalities, I really hope they can ratchet it up on the feature front.
Build it @anon91821566, and they will come…
