Monzo now has 3 million customers

adindas

Thrugelmir wrote: »

For banks it is. One only has to look at how Metro Bank is now struggling. Balance sheet strength is all important.

snowqueen555 wrote: »

Not really, profit isn't the most important thing in an early stage business like Monzo. Growth and maintaining traction are more important than short term profits. Any profits are usually spent on growing the business.

I think they will need to get the right balance between profit and growth. Focusing too much on growth they might end up like "Loot".

born_again

IvanDP wrote: »

:beer::beer::beer:

Kudos to any start up that can generate that sort of business in such a short time.
(I'm customer No 2,658,974:rotfl:)

What are the forum's thoughts?

https://monzo.com/blog/2019/09/16/three-million

Should make the normal banks sit up and take notice.
First Direct 30 years old next month. Win awards for customer service. Throw no amount of money to get new customers each year.
Yet have less than 50% of Monzo customers....

Thrugelmir

adindas wrote: »

I think they will need to get the right balance between profit and growth. Focusing too much on growth they might end up like "Loot".

Banks make their money by lending it out. Not providing current accounts or savings accounts.

18cc

Not sure there is any bank I would actually 'miss' if it folded

The only one I can think of is that my son might miss the bank of Mum and Dad but other than that....

colsten

born_again wrote: »

Should make the normal banks sit up and take notice.
First Direct 30 years old next month. Win awards for customer service. Throw no amount of money to get new customers each year.
Yet have less than 50% of Monzo customers....

Number of customers is hardly an indicator for profitability. The Monzo CEO has recently warned that losses will continue to mount up at Monzo. Did the FD CEO have to make similar statements?

20SmthngSver

I was with someone the other day who was saying how great Monzo and all it does is and then when she went to pay it didn't work.

snowqueen555

Monzo is quite fast, just like the large banks. If I send or receive money through Monzo, it comes in straight away (the other app banks seem slow), and the app alerts you on every transaction. This is surely something the main banks could do themselves, but they are missing a trick. The Monzo app is quite good in that regard, and caters to the younger crowd I think.

antrobus

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Banks make their money by lending it out. Not providing current accounts or savings accounts.

Yup, that's basically it.

Of course banks can, and do, charge for the provision of a service. But it would be a big ask for a bank to make any money doing that in the consumer market. Traditionally UK retail banks make money out of having a big pile of almost free cash from current accounts etc, which funds lending to SMEs.

Mondo did start some consumer lending in their last FY, They lent £19m and wrote off £3m of it, Which is a blooming big write off rate, and suggests they haven't got the hang of it yet.

More generally, the real issue is that Monzo is just one of a long list of start up fintech banks, all of whom want to be the Amazon of banking, whatever. One or two of them might succeed, but most of them will fail. Perhaps Monzo will be one of the winners. Or perhaps it will reach the stage where it's burnt through it's funding with no profit in sight, and get bought by RBS for a fiver,

stripeyfox

I'm a new Monzo user. I haven't made it my "main" bank yet. I still have my salary paid into HSBC and all my bills come out from there. I transfer what's left into Monzo and use that as my day to day spends and it works really well. Instant notifications, savings pots, round ups, categorising spending etc etc.

EarthBoy

snowqueen555 wrote: »

Monzo is quite fast, just like the large banks. If I send or receive money through Monzo, it comes in straight away (the other app banks seem slow),

Which other app banks have you tried? Starling payments (to and from) always go through instantly in my experience.