Monzo

Monzo Bank Limited (/ˈmɒnzoʊ/) is a British online bank based in London, England.[2] Monzo was one of the earliest of a number of new app-based challenger banks in the UK.[3]

For other uses, see Monzo (disambiguation).

Monzo Bank Ltd
Monzo
IndustryFinancial services
Founded2015 (2015)
FounderGary Dolman
Jason Bates
Jonas Huckestein
Paul Rippon
Tom Blomfield Edit this on Wikidata
HeadquartersLondon, England, UK
Key people
Gary Hoffman, (Chairman)
TS Anil (CEO)
ProductsBanking
RevenueIncrease £355.6M[1] (2023)
Increase -£116.3M[1] (2023)
Number of employees
Increase 2,432[1] (2023)
Websitewww.monzo.com

Originally operating through a mobile app and a prepaid debit card, in April 2017 its UK banking licence restrictions were lifted, enabling it to offer a full current account.[4] As of June 2023, Monzo had over 7.4 million customers.[1] Their most recent financial results issued in June 2023, showed an annual net loss of £116.3 million (a decrease from the £119 million lost in the previous year) on revenue of £355.6 million.[1]

History

2015–2017: Early growth

Monzo Bank was founded as Mondo in 2015 by Tom Blomfield,[5][6][7][8] Jonas Huckestein, Jason Bates, Paul Rippon and Gary Dolman.[9] The team originally met whilst working at Starling Bank. In February 2016, Monzo set the record for "quickest crowd-funding campaign in history" when it raised £1 million in 96 seconds via the Crowdcube investment platform.[10][11][12]

On 13 June 2016, a company blog post announced that the "Mondo" trademark had been legally challenged by an undisclosed company with a similar name.[13][14] As a result, a naming suggestion contest was organised and the new name, "Monzo", was registered at Companies House under the legal name "Monzo Bank Ltd" in August 2016.[15]

On 16 May 2017, Monzo announced that over £250 million had been spent through its prepaid card, between 200,000 customers.[16]

2017–present: Scaling up

In April 2017, Monzo was granted its full banking licence by the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority, having previously operated under a restricted banking licence.[17] The full licence allowed Monzo to provide its customers with current accounts, who up until that point were only able to be offered pre-paid debit cards.[18]

Monzo's full current account was launched in October 2017, with its pre-paid card users being asked to move to its new current account.[18] By April 2018, it was reported to have 500,000 current account customers.[18]

In October 2018, Monzo reached one million customers, and was also named the best tech startup to work for by LinkedIn UK.[19][20] Later that month, Monzo became a pound “unicorn,” with an £85 million fundraising round valuing the company at £1 billion.

In August 2019, the company announced that it had inadvertently logged 480,000 customer personal identification numbers, making them accessible to Monzo's internal team of engineers. The issue arose because PINs were transmitted in the query string of a HTTPS request.[21][22] That month the company also launched its loan products for customers.[23]

In March 2020, Monzo announced the creation of two business bank accounts for sole traders and small-to-medium sized businesses.[24] This was followed by Monzo's first loan products for its personal current account customers in April 2020.[25]

In May 2020, Blomfield announced that he was moving from CEO to president of the company and TS Anil would become the company's CEO.[26] He left the company in January 2021, citing personal pressures heightened by the coronavirus pandemic among other reasons.[27]

In March 2023, the company announced that it had become profitable for the first time.[28]

U.S. expansion

Monzo announced on 13 June 2019 that it would begin offering services in the United States. The company said that it would distribute about 2,000 debit cards to prospective members who attended events it held in major U.S. cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City.[29]

In February 2021, Monzo announced Carol Nelson as the new US CEO, taking over from TS Anil who became Monzo's global CEO after temporarily holding both titles.[30]

After it was told by US regulators it was unlikely to be approved for a banking licence, Monzo announced that it had withdrawn its banking licence application in October 2021.[31] Shortly after, Carol Nelson stepped down as US CEO.[32]

Monzo US exited beta and was fully launched on 1 February 2022.[33] Without a US banking license, Monzo operates in the US market through a partnership with Ohio-based Sutton Bank.[34]

Fundraising

In February 2016, Monzo set the record for "quickest crowd-funding campaign in history" when it raised £1 million in 96 seconds via the Crowdcube investment platform.[10][11][12]

In October 2016, Monzo announced an 'interim' funding round valuing the company at £50M and raised £4.8M in the process, led by Passion Capital.[35] This round was followed by a second £2.5 million Crowdcube crowd-funding campaign with the total pledged quickly hitting the target amount.[36]

In February 2017, Monzo raised £19.5 million from Thrive Capital, Passion Capital, and Orange Digital Ventures, which it intended to supplement with a crowdfunding campaign for an additional £2.5 million.[37]

On 6 November 2017, Monzo raised £71 million from several investors in a round led by Goodwater Capital. At the close of the round, Monzo was valued at £280 million.[38]

On 30 October 2018, Monzo became a pound “unicorn,” with an £85 million fundraising round valuing the company at £1 billion.

On 5 December 2018, Monzo held another £20 million Crowdcube crowdfunding campaign, reaching nearly £18 million in funding in less than three hours, and reaching the £20 million goal in just over two days.[39]

On 24 June 2019, Monzo raised £113 million in a Series F funding round led by Y Combinator's Continuity fund. This round gave Monzo a valuation of £2 billion.[40][41]

In June 2020, Monzo closed a £60 million 'down round', which saw its valuation fall by 40% to £1.24 billion.[42] In December 2020, Monzo closed another £60 million funding, including from investors such as for Novator, Kaiser and TED Global.[43]

In December 2021, Monzo closed a $600m funding round at a valuation of $4.5bn, led by the Abu Dhabi Growth Fund.[42]

Products and services

Monzo offers a range of current accounts, savings accounts and lending products for personal and business customers.

On 25 June 2018, Monzo announced their team up with Wise to provide international money transfers from within their Monzo app.[44]

On 28 January 2019, Monzo announced a partnership with Flux to add itemised receipts and loyalty points.[45] In addition to this, the API to create receipts was published by Monzo.[46]

In September 2021, Monzo launched Flex, a buy-now-pay-later product.[47] Later in the year, they announced a virtual credit card that can be used to make Flex transactions directly.[48]

Monzo Plus and Monzo Premium

In July 2020, Monzo launched its new premium subscription service, Monzo Plus.[49] Within the first month, the premium account had gained over 50,000 active users.[50]

Issued cards
The original design for the hot coral-coloured current account cards

Monzo initially issued (with partner company Wirecard[51]) a variety of alpha, beta and investor cards to its customers who wanted to be early adopters.[52] These were prepaid Mastercards which the user could top-up via bank transfer or via an existing debit card.[53] The balance on the card could then be spent via contactless, chip and pin, magnetic stripe or online. From early on, Monzo has issued cards in a neon "hot coral" colour - initially intended as a temporary measure during prototyping[54] - but later, a deliberate decision arising from the success of the "eye-catching" design.[55]

In December 2017, Monzo issued new Debit Mastercard cards to all its existing and new customers as the bank began rolling out current accounts. Customers signing up for the current account are issued a Debit Mastercard.[56]

Developer tools

Banks in the UK currently offer customers limited or no programmatic access to their financial data.[57] Whilst the UK Government is looking into legislation to require existing banks to comply with and adopt standards for secure and open APIs,[58] Monzo has already released a prototype API based on the OAuth standard within a year of the company's founding.

The company has also hosted four hackathons[59] and previously maintained a "Monzo Developers" Slack channel for developer discussion and support. The API allows developers to view transactions and accounts, receive notifications for events via webhooks and create their own items to appear in the app.[60] The responses are encoded using JSON which allows for data access in any programming language with JSON support.[60][61]


Fraud detection

During June 2018, Monzo gained significant public interest after fraud analysts with the bank spotted signs of and publicly announced a Ticketmaster data breach in April 2018, before Ticketmaster had spotted the breach themselves, and two months before Ticketmaster admitted the breach had occurred.[62][63]

In 2019 the BBC's Watchdog programme investigated Monzo after receiving complaints from Monzo customers who had their accounts frozen or closed.[64] Affected customers complained about the length of time they were unable to access their money.[65] In a response to this investigation, the company said that account closures take place if the bank "suspect[s] there's financial crime".[66]

Politically exposed persons

Jeremy Hunt revealed that he was rejected for a bank account with Monzo in 2022.[67] Staff at the bank have been accused of branding the Conservative Party 'evil'.[68][69]

In July 2023, Gina Miller's True and Fair Party was informed that their bank account with Monzo would be closed.[70] Monzo said that they didn't accept political parties as customers, and that True and Fair's account was not categorised as such in its application.[71]

See also

References
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  2. "The UK's new breed of digital challenger banks". Techworld. Archived from the original on 9 April 2016. Retrieved 10 April 2016.
  3. Kobie, Nicole (30 October 2019). "A new-wave of challenger banks is taking on Monzo and Starling". Wired UK. ISSN 1357-0978. Retrieved 8 November 2020.
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  6. Baker, Stephanie (18 August 2015). "A Bank for People Who Hate Banks". Bloomberg.
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  10. Dawson, Freddie. "App Bank Mondo Crowdfunds £1M In 96 Seconds". Forbes.
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  12. Turvill, William. "Mobile challenger bank Mondo reaches £1m crowdfunding target in 96 seconds, adding to £7m venture capital investment". City AM.
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  66. "Our response to the BBC Watchdog report: Why we sometimes have to block or close accounts". Monzo. 18 October 2019. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
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  70. "Gina Miller voices fear for democracy over closure of her party's bank account". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 July 2023.
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