Hi, I’ll keep this short. Basically I don’t like how Monzo seems to be adding extra features, but through third party companies: international transfers through TransferWise and Savings Pots through some other company.
I’m worried this trend will continue. What do others think about this?
T
Monzo intends to become a financial hub (including, in the long-term, managing your gas and electricity supply from within the app), so this trend will definitely continue. However, no data is actually shared until you make use of these services.
TransferWise is currently only being used until it’s all in house. This is wrong, I stand corrected. It’s not been announced that they plan to bring it in house, sorry! The latest update from Monzo on this can be found below (thanks @Rat_au_van).
As for the savings pots, I’d rather they used a third party to pay that interest as I’m sure it’s more than they could pay. Makes sense to me.
I see no need to bring services in house, when they can be sourced from experts in the field.
I think this has always been the plan. Allowing you set see multiple other people’s offerings, rather than a traditional bank where you are limited to only seeing the things they offer.
Early stages at the moment though, hence why you can only see one offering of a saving pot rather than multiple.
I guess my response would be that if I wanted to use a third party company, I’d just go to the third party rather than going through Monzo.
However, if Monzo is eventually going to be more of a financial hub and we’re just looking at the early stages then I think it makes a lot more sense.
I don’t care
As long as all the third party companies have seamless integrations with Monzo (like the current integrations for international transfers and savings pots) and my personal data is protected, it doesn’t bother me at all.
I’d definitely rather use a seamless Monzo integration than have to go into a different website/app for the same product.
Although I hope Monzo slowly bring things in house if they think they can do a better job or make stuff cheaper for their customers.
My biggest concern would be sharing linked data with Facebook as they have already asked major banks in US so they can give financial ads to Facebook users.
My facebook account will be deleted soon anyway but if Monzo do anything with Facebook I will be gone.
I think if someone is asking about Monzo and they ask a question about something that all banks should be able to do, such as “can they do international transfers”, the answer should be “yes”, and not “yes but you need to go through another company”.
I think that some basic things should be in-house.
Valid point. However does TransferWise exist because no banks actually offer the service that they do?
Revolut is challenging them quite well and AFAIK Revolut are on the edge of being a real bank. But as far as “conventional banks” go, they are universally awful at international transfers. I don’t know if it’s greed or a real reason.
I mean it was Toms original mission to say they would be the best Bank account and Financial hub and he was very clear anything that wasn’t a bank account would be outsourced to 3rd parties with heavy intergration for ease of management.
I agree with international transfer point though I guess you would expect this from a bank account but actually I have no problem with TransferWise other than it wasn’t a seamless signup
I think third parties make for a brilliant stepping stone, similar to why Monzo was originally prepaid. Stepping into the banking industry is hard, and third parties allow them a good compromise while they work on a better solution.
That said, I like the financial hub idea, too. I still see that as a longer term goal, though, and haven’t seen enough to judge their approach.
If you have time it’s worth watching back the open offices that are put up each month on youtube, several of them relate to thoughts on where the business is going.
Ideally, we’d like to bring even more third parties into Monzo.
I think the long term value in Monzo will be in being able to do almost anything that a regular person would need with money within the app. Be it with us directly or a third party through the Monzo app.
Imagine creating a savings pot and being able to pick from a range of providers with a range of terms and rates. Another good one we like to use as an example is being able to see your energy bill and kick off a provider switch using the app in a few minutes with us doing all of the backend process work.
This is all still early days and we’re responding to demand while trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. There are some things we think we can do a better job of but it takes time to do ourselves and there are others that we’ll possibly never do ourselves. 
To address international transfers directly, getting properly and directly set up in the world of international payments is a very long and complex process technically, operations, and paperwork-wise. There’s a reason why TransferWise is so successful and I don’t think us implementing international payments ourselves will entirely replace the need for them, especially for those who send or receive money frequently from different countries.