The race to TEN MILLION users

This should be fun!

Any guesses when the 10 million milestone will be reached, or indeed IF it will ever be reached? :thinking:

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My speculation is that the US license will be granted early in 2022 by which time Monzo will have ~7m users. Then over that year we will see over a million US users (=~8m) join another 2 million UK users, so my guess is December 24th 2022 :christmas_tree: That is 679 days after reaching 5 million usersā€¦ :rocket:

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Probably should have been race to 6 million or 7 million. 10 million is a very far objective in my opinion. At least 2024/5 if demand stays but I think the bell curve will start to level unless Monzo can start to take more from incumbents.

US expansion might work to get to 10 million, however, ā€˜the raceā€™ threads are only about UK subscribers?

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Keeping it to UK, the race to 6 or 7 million could be over in a heart beat it Monzo only opened the doors to kids accounts, most adult/parent users have already committed to Monzo in 1 way or another and it would therefore be a natural choice for signing their kids upā€¦

With 5 million adults there must be an easy 1 million kids and then kids have friends and so the growth continues.

Not going to earn Monzo anything in exchange fees abroad and not going to pay for Plus/Premium.

I would imagine kids are very low down a priority list.

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Yeah but you donā€™t get much firewood from an acorn but the potential is there.

Go Henry have built a business around it.

At itā€™s most basic, once Monzoā€™s sorted payments from pots, issue a kidā€™s card for Ā£1/month and just hook it to a ā€œkidā€™s potā€ in the parentā€™s app. Dull and uninspiring but totally doable. And if you could book Ā£1m/month in revenue that way, why wouldnā€™t you?

(Being me, Iā€™d rather something a bit more bold with an app for children Ć  la Go Henry etc. But like everything there are scales of ambition and return on investment here).

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Interesting to jump straight to 10 million here. I was thinking about this recently. Both 10 and 6 are equally big milestones. Hitting 6 would be about 10% of the U.K. population just about. 10 would be a significant number for Monzo hitting those 8 digits!

This one is a hard one to predict. If they ever do hit 10, theyā€™re going to need the US, I donā€™t suspect growth there will be as fast as it was here, so weā€™re probably years out, and may never get there at all. 5 million is already a lot by U.K. standards. Even some traditional banks havenā€™t hit 10 million users yet.

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Iā€™m fascinated to see what the growth curve will look like this year. And actually whether Monzo really wants many more customers or if it wants to monetise the ones it has / be more picky about where to focus its efforts.

I do wonder, though, whether comparisons with high street banks are right. As Monzo becomes part of the countryā€™s DNA, and still being part of the zeitgeist, I wonder if we will see the growth contributing and Monzo being many peopleā€™s second account?

(Indeed, the more accounts Monzo has, the bigger its network effect and power when we look at things like identity services, becoming a savings platform, or in doing radical things like reshaping the payments or financial services industry as a whole).

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When you put it like that, itā€™s quite a big number!

I often compare bank account switching to energy switching. The latest data says that 20% of households switched electric last year. That is something that can/will save you hundreds of pounds.

People donā€™t bother because they are lazy. Itā€™s everywhere telling you to do it, companies encourage it, thereā€™s a real world monthly financial benefit and 8/10 people just go ā€œnah, Iā€™ll keep paying moreā€

Aside from banking nerds and those who have horrific customer service from somewhere and switch out of rage, how often do you hear someone say they switched bank accounts?

I did CASS to Monzo and I expected it to be a tougher process than it was, it was incredibly easy.

But people are fearful of mortgage payments going wrong, being left with no money etc etc.

There isnā€™t enough incentive to switch for ā€œnormal personā€ so they donā€™t, they just continue on.

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I think you are spot on. Despite what some people on here will tell you, a lot of the Monzo features are available at other banks. Some might be slightly different, but Monzo is nowhere near as unique as it used to be. People in general will only switch if they have poor service at another bank, which I think is more rare than people make it out to be.

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Lacklustre mobile experience frustrates people into trying out the fintechs. Many people I know who got an account due to that still only use it as a secondary spending account though and still get their salary paid into the account they donā€™t like. Itā€™s inertia. Iā€™m pretty sure Iā€™m the only person I know who has ever actually used the CASS.

I suspect where Monzo is finding the most success are with folks turning 18, getting their first jobs, people seem to be going with the digital banks. My youngest brotherā€™s first and only bank account is Monzo, and he loves it.

Younger folk I know who still get paid cash though though ended up going with starling after trying Monzo. If Monzo can rectify the method for paying in cash and go with the post office like Starling, I really think the battle of the Youth will be Monzoā€™s fight to lose. Itā€™s always the name that pops up first, itā€™s the one they try first, if they nail all of the needs of those users, I donā€™t see why theyā€™d want to go looking elsewhere.

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I hadnā€™t thought of it like this. Iā€™m not sure that itā€™s true to say that the most success comes from folks turning 18, but I generally think about challenger banks through the lens of everyone already has an account elsewhere - which, as you point out, is palpably untrue for young people (or those moving from abroad).

Itā€™s been through that lens that Iā€™ve always been a bit :man_shrugging: shrugged shoulders :man_shrugging: at the idea of cash handling and cheque imaging: nice if they come, definitely useful, but not stuff I canā€™t get elsewhere.

But itā€™s an excellent point: if youā€™re 18 or new to the country, why would you want to open multiple accounts when one would do?

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100% this :point_up: - I use GoHenry and itā€™s a fantastic service but oh, do you pay for itā€¦
Ā£2.99 per month just to have an account and one top-up (transfer) per month for free with any more charged at 50p each. I think this is way too expensive and while the feature set is good, thereā€™s no need for most of the features. With child#2 about to need one, thats between Ā£6-Ā£8 per month just to have the ability to pay them as well. Expensive.

Iā€™d pay Ā£1 a month for a Pot which has a physical card and can be directly charged from the physical card :pray:

A card linked to a :monzo: Pot in a parent account would be the simpler ideal. But if it is deemed necessary to let the child see the account on their device Itā€™d need a subset of the Monzo app for the child (Monzo lite, Monzo kid, Monzo Junior) so development would be needed.

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Sounds like the community product development team strikes again. How about: Ā£1/month for a card connected to the adultā€™s pot (no app for the child); then Ā£2.50/month for a child app (first child) then an extra Ā£1.50 for each subsequent one. No other fees.

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Thatā€™s a good structure. Iā€™d definitely start with the Ā£1 per month tier and advance through as he/she/they got older.

That works well for everyone involved and Monzo would probably gain a lot of new young customers once theyā€™re old enough to open their own current account.

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Absolutely. I was taken with @N26throwawayā€™s argument and also struck by there not being a path out of Go Henry. Youā€™d think that a bank would love it as a pathway to their products - either by acquisition or partnership.

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51.07% done.

Theyā€™ve added another Wembley stadium worth of users since the last post :star_struck:

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Where did you get your statistics from