Which bank would you recommend

Free :wine_glass:

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I’m sure you do this on purpose.

Worth noting that despite not being a bank, Revolut do now offer this service (Pockets) for DDs and CPA’s. Stealing a bit of a march.

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weird… I have a lot of bank accounts and I thought they did but maybe I’m getting confused with transaction notifications.

runs off to test this… :running_woman:

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As for High St Banks I have banked with RBS, TSB, Barclays, Santander, Halifax and Lloyds. Some for longer than others.

The only one I’ve kept is RBS. I prefer the app to another other High St account I’ve used, and I have a Select Account which doesn’t require me to pay anything in - I may switch to Reward which will pay me to have the account. I do find it ludicrous the amount of things you have to do with a card reader though.

Lloyds were OK (only closed it as the switch deal was to club Lloyd’s, and I had no intention of paying in £1500 a month even as a workaround), a better online banking experience than Barclays I’d say. Halifax was obviously similar but the app was a lot laggier for me.

Santander were by far the worst, with TSB a close second.

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Oh and I’ve banked with Monzo and Starling,

Monzo I have never considered having rid of, even now as Revolut usurp a few of my day to day banking needs. Starling I closed after about 4 months of using it for 50pc of my day to day banking.

Starling for me, just feels like a half way house. It doesn’t offer a full fintech cutting edge experience, it doesn’t offer everything a BAM bank can.

As such, I’d rather keep a high St bank and use two more intuitive digital current account providers, in my case RBS as the former and monzo/Revolut the latter

Why more than one?

The short answer is, it depends on how they use their account and if they’re prepared to switch about how they think about banking.

I’d probably tell them to look at both Monzo and Starling. Personally, I prefer Monzo.

Plus, I’d tell them to check out Nationwide and Metro Bank, if Metro was local to them.

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My go-to advice is usually Nationwide.

Their mortgage rates are low, and are lower for switching deals.

Their credit card has no fx markup for purchases.

A lot of people one simplicity of one app for current account, credit card, savings, cash ISA, and mortgages (either now or later).

I typically pair that with Revolut if people need foreign fx and/or sending SEPA payments to IBAN accounts. However those that don’t do payments are sometimes ok with the Nationwide debit charges which are not as bad as others.

Or if they want packaged account. Normally Nationwide FlexPlus is by far the best and unlocks fx fee free atm withdrawals too making Revolut redundant.

And lounge access can be done with Priority Pass subscription.

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I’d recommend Monzo. It’s a bank that has changed how I view my money over the years, and though not the only bank to offer some services now, were the first (or one of the first) and there is an element of loyalty there for me.

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I wouldn’t recommend any bank. That’s for the end user to look into what they require from an account and then sign up to whichever.

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It’s a good question.

Probably because I trust Monzo with medium sized sums + my salary.

Revolut I use for other bits. I pick the odd stock for instance which you can’t do with Monzo.

The High St bank is for bigger funds and is my joint acc.

But in time, I could consider cutting one away…

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Pleasantly surprised thus far that this topic has not spun out of control

Let’s all try to keep it that way :slight_smile:

To answer OP, my dad was looking for a new bank to use for PayPal and the like and I recommended Monzo as it more than met his needs

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Given that the OP question was ‘Monzo or Starling?’, I was expecting a more flagged :pirate_flag: outcome by now. Have we all matured? :crossed_fingers:

I’m a Monzo fan but much as I love it I do find it to so much of a harder sell to my friends/family than it once was this is mostly as other banks have caught up or maybe Monzo has stopped wanting to be so far ahead.

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That seems unlikely to have occurred since the last thread that had to be put on slowdown last week, but we can hope

My heart did sink on seeing another thread comparing the two!

Monzo are that far a head, they realised all houses will be free, so we don’t need mortgages, we don’t need a credit card either, no personal banking on the web /s

Yes, it’s a joke, Starling doesn’t have 2/3 either

I’m torn between both…

I personally prefer the look and feel of Starling - just prefer the minimalist look, and find it easier to use, and prefer how ‘spaces’ are displayed… BUT, being able to schedule payments to and from a pot and being able to pay bills from pots Monzo definitely wins that one (and it’s that that has stopped me considering moving over to Starling completely)…

I think I would recommend both and the best of both worlds.
Although I do use Monzo as my day-to-day main bank… so would probably recommend Monzo if I had to pick just one.

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Worth noting that a bank having branches can be a disadvantage. In my (relatively limited) experience, banks that have a branch network tend to rely on them for certain things, as they know that they can fall back on having a branch, instead of having to make everything possible remotely. Or they require posting in some combination of forms and signatures.

It tends to be rare and for things like identity proof or name changes. But it’s a real pain if, like me, you would prefer to never have the inconvenience of physically going to a particular location just to sort out something with your bank. Or working through pages of forms and instructions and getting the appropriate authorisation.

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Cheque imaging, the ability to use Post Offices and better customer service would see me recommending Starling over Monzo.

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