Hi all,
How do we all think Monzo is going to start becoming competitive? When you put it up against Starling bank. When no doubt, as this is a growing market, so many more of these internet only banks are going to start shooting up left right and center.
I’m not going to leave Monzo because I like what it stands for and I love the product, but how about the less informed consumer?
This isn’t relevant to your questions, but why are you putting your monzo.me link on pretty much every post you make? I’ve counted 4 links out of the five posts you made. No one is going to accidentally transfer you a million pounds through it just because you put your personal link up.
I think our culture, our passion and our very public vision of what we’re trying to achieve is what makes us competitive.
You see this feed into everything we do, from feature releases, our transparent roadmap, our radical transparency on every part of our culture, from getting thorough feedback on everything we build, to things like asking our community to decide how we move forward on things like foreign ATM fees, to literally allowing all our of customers to own a piece of the company via crowdfunding! 
Ultimately, if your place in the market is based pretty much on features, it’s not sustainable. There’s only so many features that you build or that people even want before your app ends up a bloated mess that does millions of things but doesn’t do any one thing particularly well.
We’re very open about the fact that several of our competitors have features that we don’t. Some of them are things that we are building. Some of them are things that we aren’t building. But either way, we aren’t seeing any mass exodus any time that a competitor launches something we don’t have. In fact, a great deal of feedback suggests that even people who do open accounts with competitors simply for a new feature, end up returning to us pretty soon after anyway, and that comes down to culture, feeling, things that aren’t always tangible or can be measured with any type of metric!
I feel that, even taking into account my own bias, that our customer support is world class. It’s something we’re incredibly proud of. I feel that people actually enjoy using our app, it’s totally not just a utilitarian app that you have because you need it, which is often the case with banking apps. With us, people actually feel in control, and that’s not just a buzzphrase or marketing line that we try and push - it is how our community feel.
Other companies might well reply to a question like this and say - “Well, we’re going to launch X next month and Y next month and then Z after that” - and I could sit here and do that too! I mean, you can all see our roadmap to know that.
But, I don’t think that’s what makes us competitive. New features are nice but it’s not the central point of who we are. If you delve into why we are building those specific features, then that says a lot more about us, in my opinion That’s why we always try to explain, to give context about what we’re doing. For us, why we do something is the key proposition, and also why we might choose to not do something. Having a barrel full of features means nothing if they aren’t delightful, engaging, and make you feel good
I love this. So true and such a good response. I think that’s where the market is getting it wrong as well! The market is bogged down with so much stuff right now and no doubt soon, the internet banking market is going to become stuffed. But it’s times like that when people connect with their roots and don’t just go for the flashiest options available to them. They choose the socially responsible organisations. Which Is why I’m with you and not other banks like Starling. Again, they seem good and they offer some decent services, but so does my next door neighbor on roofing. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna choose him to tile my roof!
I’ve got 3 people to sign up to Monzo in the last few days and already they are loving it because they trust it. But I know many people out there who will treat something as ‘Better’ or ‘Worse’ depending on how much free stuff and offers they give away.
I’m excited to see how Monzo will expand in the market. Working in the insurance industry myself I have seen the market grow RAPIDLY because of self driving cars. I see the same thing for the online-only banking market. I’m ready to see what’s next.
It’s just like my sign off. I mean you’d have to be pretty stupid to accidentally send me millions of pounds. It’s just putting the opportunity out there isn’t it. No biggie but you never know what could pay off.
I guess you could request money?
Shame we can’t send requests like Paypal- you’d be inundated with them then.
Anyone else reading this thread who thinks it’ll be funny to send 1p for a laugh, monzo.me costs Monzo a lot more money than a bank transfer. It’s not worth it 
I think it’s the people and not the necessarily the technology.
Basically, what @simonb said.
Hasn’t there been a subset of the pre-paid card holders who used Monzo as a message service by transferring pennies around? I thought I read that last year.
IIRC @simonb posted something about a US thing where that happened.
Found it Venmo's Social Feed
Ta
Yes,I know 3 people who did that
My friend’s fiancé did this with his friends and then went for a mortgage. He had to explain to the mortgage provider what these rude/crude transaction comments were for.
To extend what @simonb replied with from a customer perspective, Monzo is such a rarity that they’ve identified their “why” (Google search for Simon Sinek and Finding Your Why / Golden Circle) before they identified their how and what.
Monzo saw a need in the UK and even the global banking sector for a bank such as themselves. However, Starling also saw a need of positive drastic change to the banking industry, they just prefer to hide the details about how and why they’re doing it. Probably just for the money, but who knows. They might have joined the scene a little earlier than Monzo, but it’s not about who does it first, it’s about who does it best!
For me, Monzo are nailing it because they’re a modern bank who are dedicated to their customers. I don’t care that other banks might have some other feature. Monzo fits my basic requirements of a bank and then some, but it’s their quality of customer service and consistent transparency that’ll keep me with them in the long term. Not even a switching bonus will tempt me away!
And when this happens,
Monzo will employ more people. And advance faster and faster.
Don’t stress, Monzo is here to stay. And they are already ahead 
Sometimes I forget that we are an exception in this and not the norm. Other times I’m drastically reminded - whenever a company has a PR disaster that could have easily been avoided by simply being open and honest.
There was an article, after one of our prepaid outages, about how we’d “somehow” turned into it a PR boon by simply being open about what was happening! But it wasn’t some calculated decision, that’s our culture, it always has been and we’ll continue to work hard to ensure we maintain that even with growth. I was telling one of my colleagues, @brenda, just earlier today that I’m really happy we’ve maintained the culture as we’ve grown from less than 50 people to 300 in less than 18 months. For me it is literally the most important thing about us and it starts from the top down - I’ve said as much to Tom before.
The moment we lose sight of that is the moment we’d become just another app in the herd. At which point, perhaps it would come down to simple things like feature comparison, as we would have lost our USP.
Some people don’t see culture as a USP, and that’s fine. We very much do, and for me the interesting thing is that it would incredibly difficult, perhaps impossible, to pivot in that direction if you didn’t start out that way. Either you set that tone from the beginning, or you’ll never have it.
It can’t be replicated, it’s in the DNA of everyone here! I’ve had some involvement in hiring, and it’s interesting - some people can say all the right things, and some people just radiate our values in a very natural way. You can feel who embodies our culture and innately understands it, and those people tend to do very well here (of course, you still have to demonstrate a certain level of ability and experience in the role you’re applying for!!)
In much the same way, I fully expect that, in the next few years, both legacy banks and perhaps other competitors in the space will start to attempt to “say the right things” to their customers and in their marketing, and those efforts will ring hollow to a lot of people. Either you embody it, or you don’t.
I think about this quite a bit (can you tell? 
) and especially when we get the odd comment from a detractor saying things like “Monzo fans are like a cult” or “it’s not a religion” etc. It’s so hyperbolic, but the actuality is that we’ve fostered people who are passionate - because we started with the “why” and not the “what” from the onset. Many people, in general, aren’t used to passion, and some people find it jarring. if you look at cultural group insults, like “nerds”, “jocks”, “bookworms”… What are these terms if not simply describing people who are incredibly passionate about tech/science, sports/physical activity, and reading? There’s this toxic cultural idea that we should for some reason suppress and discourage passion and enthusiasm.
I happen to believe that we should encourage passion. I’m proud to work somewhere that encourages it. It’s an ideal I strive to live by 
This post was longer than I intended. Guess I just wanted to express a few things 
The transparency and great customer service are really quite unique assets in a modern sue me if you don’t like it world. Unfortunately none of this replaces the functionality that I require to use Monzo as my main or only bank.
So whilst the culture is incredibly important it has to ride alongside features that make the proposition useful.
Exactly! In order to customers to truly buy into your service you gotta believe in the core concept of it yourself. If anyone is gonna be proud of something it’ll start with the people who made it. If they’re being secretive, with the exception of the really high level stuff or customer data obviously, then to me it gives the impression that the company either isn’t proud of what they do, don’t understand why it’s that way or worse are doing something the majority of they’re customer base wouldn’t be happy with.
Ditto with my previous post and this one too 
I get everything that has been said, the transparency shown by Monzo is really refreshing and is different to the big banks but I think a large proportion of ‘mass market’ customers just want their Monzo account to work and wouldnt want a detailed explanation of why their was an outage, for example.
If Monzo wants to reach a billion people then its going to need to appeal to those mass market customers. If I’m someone who’s earning the minimum wage in the UK and I’m contemplating switching my bank why would I choose Monzo when Halifax is currently offering me £125 and £3mth just for switching to them.
I dont think Monzo is at the stage where it’s going all guns blazing to try and onboard customers to the new current account but when it does it will absolutely need to be able to articulate to the average Joe Bloggs why they should chose Monzo over one of the big six who are offering some really quite appealing incentives! Being transparent and having a nice culture wont do that I dont think!
