Monese will charge punters £4.95 a month

SnowTiger

Monese has announced its current account will cost £4.95 a month. Punters who already have an account won't be charged the fee until 1st June.

Apparently "Monese accounts are up to 5x cheaper than highstreet bank accounts."

The account seems to be mainly aimed at people from other European countries who can't get a normal bank account in the UK.

shortcrust

Their '5x cheaper claim' is ludicrous. What does five times cheaper even mean?!

Herbalus

Probably along the same lines of the CMA reporting that claims the average person pays a few £100 for their banking every year.

What this actually means is that those who never use an overdraft get free banking and those who go overdrawn all the time get royally kicked in the backside.

So accounts that charge a monthly fee and don't let you go overdrawn can say they are cheaper than the average, but it's only those who pay mega-bucks for their banking (and those would generally be the ones who are less likely to switch as they aren't as engaged in the marketplace [or can't switch for debt reasons]), who would actually benefit.

All in all, I think the new banks that are saying they're revolutionary by charging for banking is a barmy plan. The people most likely to switch are the people who are looking for perks.

eskbanker

Herbalus wrote: »

All in all, I think the new banks that are saying they're revolutionary by charging for banking is a barmy plan.

Perhaps they're inspired by Stella Artois's famous "reassuringly expensive" marketing campaign, which didn't seem to do them too much harm in building market share!

diamonds

I guess TSB (&Lloyds?) £10 Control has a competitor though at half the price for people poor at budgeting. Which can be grumbled at.

cheesetoast

SnowTiger wrote: »

Apparently "Monese accounts are up to 5x cheaper than highstreet bank accounts."

Which, of course, technically they are - given that you could get a £25 a month Lloyds Premier account if you really felt so inclined.

But that's like saying that £1 for a mars bar is "up to 100 times cheaper than sports cars".

crowding

Pretty terrible from them all round here. They promised basic access would be free forever.

They've gone back on that promise and now are also starting to block users who've criticised this move on Twitter.

ceredigion

jaceq88 wrote: »

NEW MONESE ACCOUNT? get 5£ with this code free!

QPAG2KAH

You have only made three posts and all three are the same. Time to go.
:spam:
:xmassign:

Zanderman

eskbanker wrote: »

Perhaps they're inspired by Stella Artois's famous "reassuringly expensive" marketing campaign, which didn't seem to do them too much harm in building market share!

That campaign may not have done them much harm in gaining market share - but these days Stella is "worryingly cheap" in every supermarket in the country.

If the new fee-charging banks were inspired by Stella Artois's approach we should perhaps expect them to become some of the genuinely cheapest banks in due course!