I am leaving for a 3 year around the world adventure with my wife to be soon and we are looking into various travel cards for our journey. From what i have read so far about Monzo it sounds pretty great!
My only concern is the verification process. I have been a victim of identity theft before and the trouble it caused was insane! Really something i NEVER want to deal with again and has made me extra cautious when dealing with personal and sensitive information since.
I understand some type of verification may be needed to stop money laundering etc which is understandable. But, seeing as you have to scan your id with such sensitive and valuable information and record a video with audio that really does sound rather invasive and also an identity scammers wet dream! I am wondering what are these documents used for and what is done with them once they have been received? Are they shared with anyone outside Monzo? Are the documents securely deleted once the verification has been completed or is this sensitive data just sitting on a hard drive somewhere which could be compromised further down the line?
I really do want to sign up but i would want assurance of the security measures in place to stop our details being compromised in any way, especially seeing it is all handled from within an app and to my knowledge there is no way to send an encrypted file or an encrypted self destructed file.
Hope you can help me out , its really appreciated! Thanks
I would assume the copied ID is retained on file, my main bank certainly do and recently requested fresh ID as the ID on file was out of date, all employers do, and any recruitment agency is required to do so now.
Not sure about the Monzo prepay card being right for you given that you’ll be traveling for 3 years. Current accounts will start rolling out soon and prepay cards will be phased out, almost certainly within the coming year…we don’t know the full details yet.
There’s nothing stopping you from applying to open current accounts when the time comes, but Monzo will send the debit cards to your home address so you’ll need to arrange for the cards to be sent out to wherever you might be at the time. On the plus side the current deposit, withdrawal and spending limits of the prepay cards will be lifted when we get debit cards.
Please remember that the pre-paid card will not work for your 3 years of travel. The pre-paid card is expected to last until the end of 2017 even if that late, once the debit cards are out the pre paid will stop working.
That may not be the case, judging by the tweets I’ve seen, Monzo are willing to send replacement cards to almost anywhere in the world. So they may be able to send the new debit cards to an alternative address too.
I’m not a security expert. I completely understand your issues with ‘someone’ having your documents. Here are some arguments - I’ve been Monzo user since January.
Monzo is a fully licensed bank, they had to pass probably a ton of checks to get there. If their infrastructure was leaky or protocols rubbish, well…
Monzo is… a bank, so those documents are absolutely required. I know that Monzo might seem like less of a bank, because it’s mobile only, but same rules apply.
Monzo clearly states in T&C what they do with data, “16. How we use your information”. It’s so transparently written that it’s a pleasure to read, really.
Monzo trumps high-street banks because infrastructure is new, probably more tested and generally based on current, cutting-edge solutions. Monzo doesn’t use something as laughable as Windows XP (Barclays, I’m looking at you). While it may be personal opinion, Monzo seems actually less risky.
Monzo is hiper-transparent. If there are any problems, Monzo will inform us about it next to immediately. I don’t have as much faith in major banks, I expect them to make PR plays and wait for it (unfortunately Tesco Bank couldn’t go for it, because money were taken from accounts). Or not notice breach until a year later.
And last but not least, though this one is most impressive for me personally. Monzo plans to make majority of the code public and available for review (fraud detection stuff was said to be excluded for obvious reasons). Any developer/specialist will be able to review code and make Monzo safer and better. Monzo obviously doesn’t rely on others regarding security, but crowdsourcing things can give amazing results - could Monzo be the safest bank of all times in few years time?
Identity theft is understandable concern, I just wanted to show things from my perspective. What do you say to that?
