I used Monzo as my day-to-day bank for two months and have only stopped using it because I'm not in the UK and need to keep my money in local currency. It was a terrific experience. Having an instant push notification when money enters or leaves my account, treating card purchase reservations instantly as unconfirmed transactions and not as nebulous inaccessible money, having transaction information presented in a human-friendly format, showing foreign currency transactions in the foreign currency, not charging currency exchange fees, being able to add notes to transactions… it's such a stark contrast to the mobile banking efforts of mainstream banks.
By the way, if you're in the EU, bunq is a similar mobile challenger bank but based in the Netherlands and serving all of SEPA (if you're in the Eurozone you can use them as your main bank; I live in a non-Euro EU country so hold an account just for the hell of it).
Disclaimer: I have multiple friends who work at Monzo.
I've been using Monzo for a few years now and also have some friends there.
I have to say the app is just amazing, none of the traditional banks even come close to what Monzo provide. There is nothing overly complex to it - but it just works. Shows you things you would expect a bank to be able to show you, for example the name of the shop where you made a purchase and it's location. Rather than some random name of a parent company.
Sending money to friends has also become so easy now, I make Monzo to Monzo payments on a weekly basis it just works.
I've heard they're great to work for too. Would be interested in working there myself one day.
Monzo was really great to use, and a step in the right direction for banks, so nice job with that! I ended up closing my account when you switched to being a 'proper' bank, but for the couple of months I used it, it was very good.
As for the jobs, fully remote would be ideal, but at least you're offering it at all :). London is such an expensive place, even spending 1 week out of 5 there would be £££.
I love Monzo for the instant payments between account holders. That said, since I stopped working in London I've barely used it - up north I don't run into many people that use Monzo.
Hidden from who though? The bank obviously needs to know the exact business because what if a dispute opens over the charge. And the end user presumably would like to check that they actually made the purchase so they will need to see the details.
I’m guessing they were considering the possibility of a curious spouse/partner looking at your records. Which to me seems far, far less likely to happen with an app-based transaction history than a traditional paper statement posted out to you.
If your spouse is checking your bank statements you're probably in an abusive relationship. Hiding things from them seems like a huge red flag in this respect, too (though I'll admit that perhaps gifts are a valid exception here).
>By the way, if you're in the EU, bunq is a similar mobile challenger bank but based in the Netherlands and serving all of SEPA (if you're in the Eurozone you can use them as your main bank; I live in a non-Euro EU country so hold an account just for the hell of it).
I've considered bunq but couldn't really make sense out of their monthly fee (at least for me) once compared to N26. At the moment I've got them as my main bank account and Revolut for exchanging money quickly with friends and family.
At first glance to me at least, it's not clear if there's actually only a "business" and a "premium" plans?
Does that mean that for individuals there's only a "premium" plan but not standard plan? So premium (with 25 accounts and three cards!) is actually the standard plan?
Nothing was "confusing", but, again, IMHO the features provided don't really make sense under a monthly fee.
They could have easily created a free basic account with those exacts same things and offer a pro upgrade for the "25 accounts" and related IBANs + joint accounts.
There is no feature comparison between Business and Premium.
I was under the understanding that the 9,99 would be all inclusive, but at the same time it seems there is a fee for "Paying a direct debit.", not sure what is comprised within that term, does that mean every time we pay with a card?
> but at the same time it seems there is a fee for "Paying a direct debit.", not sure what is comprised within that term, does that mean every time we pay with a card?
No - a "direct debit" in banking is where you give, e.g. Vodafone, your bank details and permission that they may debit your account once a month to pay your phone bill. For completeness, a "standing order" is similar - a monthly recurring payment to someone else.
The primary difference is that, with a direct debit, the company can change the amount to be paid each month - e.g. if you go over your plan and incur extra changes, they can just debit those from your account automatically.
That's the first time I've ever seen a per-direct-debit fee, it's quite unusual. The average person probably has 5-10 direct debits on their account, every month, for bill payments.
> By the way, if you're in the EU, bunq is a similar mobile challenger bank but based in the Netherlands and serving all of SEPA (if you're in the Eurozone you can use them as your main bank; I live in a non-Euro EU country so hold an account just for the hell of it).
is there a similar option for people who have citizenship of an EU country but are not physically present in EU?
Revolut requires a physical address in the EEA for registration, but after that it can be used from anywhere in the world, including worldwide debit card delivery. It has already applied for a banking license in the EU, and is planning to do the same in the US. Even without it, it's much more feature-proof than Monzo[1], and is already profitable, unlike most other app-only banks[2].
Pretty much every country has at least some options for opening a bank account for non-residents. TSB has an account for EU, non-UK residents for instance, that gives you a normal UK checking account with a visa card:
Yup, but you have to be elsewhere in the EU. You can have a non-resident bank account pretty much anywhere, but you either have to visit the bank's branch office, or be trusted in any other way (residing in a jurisdiction that's trusted, or be a bank's customer elsewhere)
Not citizenship, but tax law. The US is the only major country in the world which taxes its citizens when they live abroad, so EU fcompanies need to know if you're one, so they can report to the IRS and tax you properly, or handle their anti money-laundering responsibilities.
Yupp. It's more a case of firms not wanting the hassle, so they usually just deny service to US citizens. Apparently transferwise has a similar issue, I'm not aware as luckily I'm not a US citizen.
If you tax residence is outside of the UK it will generate more paperwork for the bank and they might decide to close your account. Especially the new banks might not have the infrastructure required to handle that. This is because banks have to report income to the tax country to avoid money laundering and tax evasion.
American citizens have this problem because the US is always a tax residence regardless of where you live so a lot of banks don't want to provide financial service to them. And IRS is particularly bad with paperwork.
If you are thinking of moving abroad, use a big bank like Barclays or HSBC and it shouldn't be a problem.
Your comment provides more information about the tangible convenient benefits of using Monzo than their website does. They really need to get someone to give that site an overhaul, concentrating on on what they do better than conventional banks.
I have a Monzo acocunt, and one with Starling who are similar. They are both great. Rumours I hear from developers are that they can't get management to take security seriously though, which is a little worrying...
They are still better than the incumbent banks on security though. An example is how they both issued new cards to their customers affected by recent Ticketmaster data breaches, or British Airways hacks. After those events, they just contacted anyone who's shopped with the affected retailers and sent them new cards.
I don't think this is an example of "not taking security seriously". No incumbent bank has done this, because it's expensive to issue new cards.
That's worrying and also really surprising. If you have the time, would you mind giving more details either here or by email? (my email is in my profile)
Disclaimer: I work for a cybersecurity startup. Also a Monzo customer.
I live in a nearby non Euro country, and I'm thinking of closing my Halifax (traditional) bank account before Brexit.
I kept the Halifax account for foreign spending and cash, as the Mastercard has no fees for this. The bank account is free, typical in the UK for personal accounts.
Bunq looks to charge €8/month, is that right? I don't think I'd get that much value from it, and going from £0/year to €96/year for my secondary account isn't great.
Maybe for UK these features are amazing, but in Poland most banks have been providing users with similarly featured apps for several years now.
Revolut is a bit different though, because it offers a fresh angle at multi currency support.
What bank? Between IdeaBank, BZWBK (now Santander) and Millenium Bank, all the applications were mediocre to (in case of Millenium for Business) utter crap.
The three I mentioned I use at the moment, and my opinion is current as of 2018-09-25. mBank... I do have an account, though I never bothered to install an app for it.
I'm guessing... Austria? They only accept specifically Maestro and not Mastercard? N26 by default gives you a Mastercard but they also offer a Maestro if requested[0]
bunq looks amazing, and have all the features I would love in a bank, but 8€/month doesn't seems right. Going from 0€/year to 96€/year for APIs & notifications is not worthy.
If they ever get a free or cheaper plan (like €1/month for 1 card and 1 iban) I'd jump on it without thinking twice.
I would like to see more banks /fintech startups with the same approach to things as Czech primordial fintech startup: Fio.
It is combination of stock broker and credit union (nowadays full-fledged bank) that was founded by bunch of CS graduates. They had internet access to account from the start, originally supported by custom made authentication device and 20 line officially supported shellscript that emulated the device by means of bunch of few "openssl something" commands. They have rest API that really is REST (GET account movements, PUT bunch of payment orders, no bullshit) and when they didn't have API they docummented format of movement notification emails and officially acknowledged and supported machine parsing of such messages (to the order of providing example code).
Somehow I think that EU's PTS2 and such things tries to force banks to do this, but solves the problem from the wrong end.
You just described the bank I want. Why oh why we can't have this?
For instance, right now I'm figuring out how to simply query my account balance in a non-interactive way, just to have it displayed on my machine. I basically have two options - try to drive a headless browser through full login process and scrap the main site, or reverse engineer whatever mechanism they have that lets their mobile app show my balance without logging in. Either way, I'm worried the bank will sack my account for breach of TOS, or "attempt at hacking", or some other bullshit.
Really, why can't I just get a token and query some API?
is it the bank which had problems with USD payments for weeks/months? no thanks, i need reliable bank, they already messed up my USD payment prior this known issues because of changing intermediary bank
I have been using N26 as my daily driver for the last year, and I really don't want to look back at any bank that is using branches. However, I feel N26, Revolut, Monzo, Tomorrow, and all of the others are driving customers away with very expensive "premium" plans.
I recently opened an account with DKB, another German direct bank, but with a shitty app. They offer everything I paid N26 5,90€ month to month (which they raised to 9,90€, can you imagine that) and much more like overnight money and a stock depot, for the tradeoff of having a shitter app, which is basically a webview loading their webpage.
The next thing Europe needs is a Robinhood-like app for fee-free trading.
> The next thing Europe needs is a Robinhood-like app for fee-free trading.
Definitely. For generic Europeans wanting to invest in stock market you don't have much choice. There are couple of archaic and/or dodgy brokers with shitty apps (or no apps at all, just some bad websites built decade ago an never upgraded).
> For generic Europeans wanting to invest in stock market you don't have much choice. There are couple of archaic and/or dodgy brokers with shitty apps (or no apps at all, just some bad websites built decade ago an never upgraded).
What's wrong with Degiro[1], founded in 2013, and available in 18 European countries?
I'd prefer something easy to use with quick onramp like RobinHood. I had tried to register with IB UK, their registration process was super complex with many pages of information needed and in the middle of me filling the registration form their server went down and I lost whatever I have filled in already. I settled down for buying stocks via my bank account which has some archaic broker, it costs 11 pounds per transaction so it incentivises me to only do few bigger trades and to hold for a long time I guess.
I've looked at a lot of brokers and the choice is overwhelming. Interactive Brokers UK didn't stand out, except for using branding that gives deceiving impressions on who it's regulated by. A more common example is falsely posturing to be regulated by Swiss. I'm not sure why present yourself as a UK brokerage, when in fact you're US regulated.
Anyway, why do you hold IB to be best consumer-oriented broker available anywhere?
Edit: Actually I was looking at forex brokers, stocks is probably different in that a lot of people want access to the US market.
IB is the largest retail broker with access to most global exchanges. I'm not sure there are any competitors in the same league so it's hard to compare.
I've been paying €4.90 for N26 Black since it was released. I can say that it is definitely not worth €9.90. I wonder if my price will end up increasing.
> TransferWise has significantly better fees than Revolut for currency conversion and also offers a card.
Do you have a few data points by chance?
I have both cards and I'm trying to figure it out (mostly for CHFEUR). At first glance it seems that TransferWise fees give you a rate that is as good or a little better than MasterCard (Visa is typically quite a bit more expensive). Also during weekends, TansferWise should beat Revolut. However when FX markets are open, it's not clear (mid-market + fee with TW, bid/ask rates with Revolut afaik).
I always found transfer.xe.com far cheaper than transferwise. Though it might depend on the currency you are converting to.
When I tried to convert EUR to ZAR, they wanted 25€ in flat fees, a percentage and had a worse conversion rate than xe who had no fees and a better conversion rate.
I've never paid a cent for my EU € banking needs for twenty years. Decent web based banking. Real people in a branch a 5 minute walk away. Free SEPA € transactions, free debit and credit card.
These traits certainly aren't found in all EU countries.
> Real people in a branch a 5 minute walk away.
None of the major banks in the UK meet this critetia (well, maybe in London). Most of the banks are located in city centres, manned 9-to5 Mon to Friday (which is when im working of course), and most of them tell you to do your banking online/using the in-branch machines.
> free debit and credit card.
Again,country specific. Ireland used to charge 2.50/cadx, and now charges 0.12c a transaction, up to 2.50 per year.
Where are you? Where I live the banks are pretty much a cartel that haven't had to handle competition for decades and view their customers with infantilizing condescension. And there are loads of fees, as well as absurd interest rates on mortgages. Oh, and they destroyed the country, at least for a while.
Instant account update on purchases (I mean instant, I get a little ding on my phone before the tx has even gone thru at pos). No charges. Can use throughout Europe with no additional cost. No branches no bricks and mortar to subsidise.
In case anyone is interested, the EU has been taking an active interest in disrupting banking monopolies. Check out PSD2! [1]
Nobody in his right mind should be using N26, if he cares about his account security. It's beyond my mind, how an online-first bank can be built by hiring dozens of software engineers, but not a single security expert, leaving hundreds of thousands of customers vulnerable to multiple attack vectors[1].
I'm not too concerned by this to be honest. Since the last 10 years banking is regulated to such a painful degree that such concerns are minutiae.
This isn't bitcoin or a stage coach hurtling through the wild west. The only way money is leaving my account is by way of my chip & pin card, which is no easier or difficult than any other, and subject to the same protections, or by wire transfer which is easily detected and reversed.
Beyond that, it's the bank's problem, ergo their underwriters and if they weren't happy they wouldnt be underwriting. Even then, if the bank does go tits up my deposits are guaranteed.
That said, of course there may be risks of bad actors within the bank itself, but even in that regard I'm at least as safe as I am with any other bank.
TLDR: A German security researcher was able to take over any N26 account, even though that theoretically required having an access to customer's email address, phone number, and MasterCard ID. He was then able not only to transfer the money from the account, but also to take a credit on customer's behalf.
Thanks. As I said, both of these actions are both easily traceable and reversible. Some inconvenience to me certainly but I am covered, and the the thief is most probably in jail.
This does affect N26's own risk-profile and they'd do well to address it as such it would affect their bottom line but as a customer I have little more to fear than I have with any other bank.
I'd expect they have a lot of latitude to play with on the risk side though vs B&M banks because they don't have any actual physical exposure.
> As I said, both of these actions are both easily traceable and reversible. Some inconvenience to me certainly but I am covered, and the the thief is most probably in jail.
That's only true, if the bank itself was aware of its security issues, which N26 was not. From the bank's point of view, you had just started using its mobile app on a new device after successfully proving your identity without any suspicious activity in the logs.
Yeah a mobile device that I don't own, in a location I haven't been in, buying things I didn't buy. Most of this is easily provable, and I make such assertions based on fear of prosecution for fraud if I'm lying.
Obviously if this is the case it's an issue for them to address and to not do so puts them at risk of negligence.
You probably would have been safe, unless you lived in Germany and used CASH26[1], like many N26 users do. In that case, a hacker could have just taken all the money out at the place you frequent using any device. Good luck trying to prove to the app-only bank that you didn't give your credentials to anybody, when the bank is not aware of any security breaches.
I wonder is there a waiver in the T&C that says you’re responsible for any losses of that kind ...
Would make for an interesting court case if not!
I still think any such losses are on the bank itself. It would be incumbent upon them to refund, especially given that the details of such an attack are in the public domain!
I use N26 as well. I have concerns about using UK mobile banking apps like Monzo, Revolut and Monese because Brexit and I trust the EU more than the UK regarding privacy.
Theres the added advantage that because N26 are German all savings up to €100k are insured by the German government.
I heard it said that these aren't actual "banks" per se ... whereas N26 is, and is regulated as such.
Just another reason to feel a bit more secure.
Though the additional services Revolut offer have piqued my interest. In particular crypto payments.
The -ve with N26 is that they don't offer much beyond standard current a/c services. No loans or savings for instance, or overdraft, which is all totally fine for what I used it for. I'll fall back on the B&M bitches for the harder stuff.
They offer all of these in Germany. Afaik extending credit lines is regulated differently across the EU and it might take time to scale it out. I don't understand why they don't offer savings and investments in more countries though, given they are only an intermediary.
The parent comment indicates that N26 operates under a similar deposit guarantee: "because N26 are German all savings up to €100k are insured by the German government."
I've found that Xero (a cloud accounting platform) can integrate with pretty much any bank. Turns out they do this via a service called Yodlee - and it seems they can provide a read-only API to most banks, if that's what you're after.
What I love about my current app-only bank's approach, is that that also includes customer service. I had to speak to them a couple of times, and all the chat is handled inside the app. And dealt with quickly. Love it.
With my old high street bank their app is ok, but often have to refer to the web based service for more extensive features. That made me anxious about using an app-only bank. 1 year in and I have never thought "hmmm wish I could do this on my laptop". You do everything via the app, and it is intuitive.
Since the only time I go into a bank's branch is to open the initial account and then never again, I have no need for them anymore. App-only is fine for me.
I do wonder how services like Curve affects the app-only banks though.
The title mentioned lending, but the article says almost nothing about it.
As other commenters have noted, these new banks often have great customer experience. But they don't do much lending. For example, as of February this year, Monzo's loan book totalled 160,000 GBP [0]
Disclosure: I co-founded a UK-based fintech lending business (www.oakam.com). We're hiring PMs, Data Scientists and Software Engineers. Message me if you might want to work on expanding access to credit, and increasing financial inclusion.
But it's true that we're intending to stay relatively balance-sheet light - the aim is to offer a "financial hub", plugging in third-party products to a central current account (or "checking account" for our US friends).
I like this approach; feels very unix-y in philosophy. I am in the position where I'm undoubtably going to need to become an adult soon, and the prospect of going back to traditional banks makes me ill.
I've been using Monzo for some while but since I've moved away from London for a while, I couldn't give them a UK address for the new checking bank account. I have been using the original Monzo prepaid debit card and was happy with it but that was discontinued.
Funny enough, I am also a long time TSB customer which is a bank mentioned in the article. Ignoring their huge mess around migrating users to new platform (made by Spanish bank that owns them now), their mobile app is surprisingly good.
Given I travel a lot and have lived in multiple countries, I have several bank accounts so I don't rely on any single one.
Few years ago I consulted a bank in Norway. It was hard to believe how many customers used infected browsers to connect to the website resulting in huge support cost.
The app is much more secure especially on iPhone or modern androids with crypto enclave or what ever it is called. With that even if a customer installs malicious app and grant it a lot of permission, the bank app can still be unaffected.
>The app is much more secure especially on iPhone or modern androids with crypto enclave or what ever it is called. With that even if a customer installs malicious app and grant it a lot of permission, the bank app can still be unaffected.
"crypto enclave" isn't a silver bullet that magically prevents you from getting hacked. it might keep your signing keys from being divulged, but if the attacker has root access (or jailbroken), there's nothing preventing the attacker from getting the enclave to sign whatever request it wants. at the very least it can corrupt the legitimate app's memory to force it to make a transfer.
the security comes from sandboxing, not secure element/enclave.
And mine runs a 2018 build of LineageOS but the bank apps don't trust it because it is rooted.
We're approaching a point of lockdown where Google and Apple win the war against general-purpose computing. I don't know what I'll do then, perhaps just keep a vanilla Android device in a drawer purely for running apps that I need? But I'd better keep it updated or else the apps may refuse to run. And with an app-only bank that's a scary scenario.
N26 works on rooted phones AND have a website (and I'd go through the trouble of switching banks again if they discontinued it), but for transfers you need the app.
I seriously expect, in the near future, only people with highly specialist needs like software developers, video/audio professionals and the like to still use some kind of laptop or desktop -- everyone else will pretty much move to some kind of tablet of various sizes (including mobile "phones").
Don't think so. 90% of office jobs in service economy are still basically about entering numbers into Excel spreadsheets and making documents, powerpoint presentations etc. I just don't see any way to make spreadsheet application like Excel work on a touchscreen at an acceptable level for generic office employees.
Furthermore, I am going to make a crazy prediction. I think we will see a substantial revival of PCs in the coming decade as people start finding out there are some things mobile phones or tables will just never be able to do. Only thing needed is an open source operating system with good UI because Windows is obviously not a way forward.
Android and iOS have keyboard HID support baked in. Pair your keyboard to a tablet, boom, you have a data entry terminal that can run Excel just fine, and has a greatly restricted attack and security surface. This is essentially the model of Chromebooks, but there's nothing particularly magical about Chromebooks over any other Android tablet. I don't think Windows or Linux are going to be the OS of choice for most people in the future, regardless of what physical form the computers take.
Until megacorps like Microsoft, Adobe, Salesforce etc stop offering their bread-and-butter products on a fee per user per month basis, the whole automation thing is still going to need people to make it happen.
So what will all those people do? It would be politically impossible to allow automation to replace all these jobs. I think these jobs will be kept around just to make the electorate happy.
Exactly, basically every office worker in service economy who needs to use Excel/Word/Powerpoint or any application like that will be using a desktop computer decade from now. People saying mobile phones or tables are going to take over this segment of market are missing how difficult it is to create content on mobile phone other than pictures or short videos.
They'll look like laptops but won't be running Windows, Linux, or Mac. They'll be running iOS or Android. The iPad Pro or the Surface line are the first entries into this model. The pure Android solutions are more DIY but really, slap a keyboard onto a tablet and you've got something perfectly servicable for Word or Excel, at a higher performance/$ and a smaller attack surface than currently deployed desktops.
No, I mean "creating highly specialist content". Many types of content can already be -- and in many cases is -- quite validly created on devices like iPad Pro: photography, drawings, graphical design, and above all writing. And the tools are still being improved.
As a daily and happy user of an iPad I think these devices still have a long way to go before they become a desktop replacement.
Let me illustrate this by outlining a bunch of small tasks I, as a music collector, am confronted with several times a week:
- buy a bunch of releases from bandcamp or other digital stores
- download them
- extract them
- if necessary convert them to Apple Lossless (ALAC) at 44.1 KHz / 16 Bit
- check and adjust the meta data / tags of the files and have them renamed accordingly
- move them to my NAS from where they are served to various devices and players around the house
All of these tasks are fairly simple and should be easily handled by an iPad, yet the OS and lack of a real file browser is limiting the device's abilities to such an extent that I have to get back to my desktop to handle these mundane duties.
You might argue that my use case is a very niche one, the ways in which computers are used are made of countless niche applications and tasks, which repeatedly show the limitations of tablets and phones, despite their potential.
I wish. While I could see dedicated apps for the conversion and tagging tasks (on macOS this is done by apps like XLD[1] or Meta[2] respectively), the ability to download, extract and move files requires a good, powerful, ideally first-party file browser in my opinion. It could be handled apps, but I think it's awkward to use several different apps for basic task like extracting, file management and talking to SMB shares.
That and all the people ho don't have any need for mobility and want nice big screens and decent keyboards and ergonomics. Everyone in the offices where I work are on desktops, I don'yt see it changing.
Yes. The old miniature PC motherboard formats are disappearing... almost gone. In their wake are custom machines, sometimes known as SOM (system on module) which are much smaller and produced for a combination of embedded applications such as TV set-top boxes. I project these will steal more desktop and laptop market, as they are so cheap. Example @ http://shop.t-firefly.com/category.php?id=2
Hmm. At least with revolut, app only means they can do infrequent SMS auth (for setting up a new phone) and otherwise use the stable phone for auth. I suppose the key point here is that requiring their users to have a smartphone allows them to really simplify auth, but that doesn’t preclude also offering a website. Maybe they just don’t think most users would want it? (My personal usage of revolut is quite limited and the app works fine for me.)
Maybe the bigger question I have here is what the core innovation is. I use revolut for the cheap currency exchanges, but there’s no reason any other bank couldn’t offer that. Maybe the market for such services is just very small, or most traditional banks make more money by selling add on services (mortgages, say) based on a very tight relationship (vs revolut’s more temporary/limited usage model).
The core innovation is to make the app really polished and straightforward to use to cut the support costs. Traditional banks may not care about it enough as in the worst case they can direct the customer to a local office.
You're spot on. I'm in strategy and we monitor the challenger banks regularly. Very little money is earned from things like current accounts, which is what all these app-only banks. Money is to be made in loans, mortgages and credit cards. Despite all the great hype, they are still a tiny proportion of the number of customers that mainstream banks have.
Great app, great user experience but would be interesting to see how profitable these challenger banks are.
FWIW, revolut appears to be aimed st selling different (probably lower overhead) services. Their premium accounts offer higher withdrawal limits, but they also sell cellphone insurance, etc.
Still, as a skeptic, I can’t shake the thought that they’re just building market share at low profitability based on VC overexuberance.
In Monzo's case they do have a limited website for emergency situations.
I suspect it comes down to security and development effort. Modern mobile devices are secure and can be trusted somewhat for authentication, and focusing on a great app for two platforms might be the best use of development resources.
There is a very important difference between the two.
You can access a web site via ubiquitous, open-standards compliant software known as web browers. This means you can use the service from any operating system/computing platform you wish, existing or future, provided it implements said standards.
It's obviously important that we resist transitioning to a world where core life activities like commerce and banking requires running proprietary software on a finite set of supported proprietary systems.
Many of the “big traditional banks” used to have this idiotic rule of not using more than 10-12 characters in your account password for many many years, many still do now. So I would not be so judgeful on the new app-only banks.
French banks don’t use TAN codes? Isn’t it an EU directive at this point?
It doesn’t have have to be a dedicated hardware token or a chip TAN, mTAN or soft tokens are also acceptable.
Not French, but German here. TANs are obviously used for transactions, but I've never seen them used for login purposes. To add insult to injury, the _only_ permissible password length for my bank was 5 (five!) characters.
Unless a 6-digit "password" that you choose and stays the same for as long as you wish counts as a soft token, no they don't. Well, most don't, although some do.
I don't actually know what are the TAN codes you are talking about, I guess, if they're some technical implementation detail I sure don't know about it.
For a SEPA transfer, you input the code of the account you want to transfer money to, then the amount and various optional messages and transactions codes if you want, then click "submit" and it's done.
For me in the UK to move money I need to generate a TAN using a SecureID token the TAN is generated by using the secret in the token and digits of the account number I need to transfer money too.
The same SecureID also generates OTP for 2FA login.
But there are other TAN schemes including pregenerated lists and TANs sent over SMS or TANs which are generated by using the smartcard in your debit card.
That talk makes N26 look utterly terrible. With a single command and a leaked email and password, the account could be compromised from anywhere in 5 minutes! D:
Practical security with these apps, at least Monzo is much better for the average consumer because I'll learn about fraudulent transactions immediately via a notification on my phone. With my high street bank (1st direct, which I only really keep for their free coin machines) I might learn about it... weeks later when I check my balance on their website... maybe. I don't have their app installed because it is shit.
Btw another reason I kept 1st direct was to pay in cheques which the government still insists on using, but Monzo lets you do that with a photo of the cheque now I believe. Can you imagine 1st direct ever being that modern? Their website still opens in a popup and tells you no to use the back button!
At least in the UK, by law you are not responsible for any fraud on your account, and even if the bank folds the government will bail them out up to 85k per account (FSCS protection), so I wouldn't be worried.
if there's a serious fraud and the "app only bank" disagrees that you had 50k in your bank account: how do you prove it to a court without paper statements?
this is the reasoning that prevents me storing any more than trivial amounts in these app only banks
a magistrate understands a paper statement on company stationary
> how do you prove it to a court without paper statements?
The UK banking sector is not unregulated. You would expect, that when a company is certified by the relevant authority that they would have to comply with standards and reporting requirements.
getting onto the FSCS protection is not trivial, if it was then Revolut would also be on it.
So Mr. Stevenson was frustrated when his previous retail bank's computers were down - so he moved to a computer only bank? Nice logic. I hate branches but its nice to know when everything is screwed up I can go into a physical place and talk to someone. The next crisis when your virtual bank app stops working - what are you going to do then?
If it's down for you, it'll be down for the branches. The point of these new banks are so that you can do anything inside the app without having to jump through endless hoops. An example, I'm using Monzo now (a new "challenger bank" in the UK). If I want an overdraft I can enable / disable that in the app. Same goes for if I want to disable my card, change the pin, order a new card. Everything's just easier. No need to spend ages on the phone going through menus and verifying who you are.
The bank can disable your account by mistake or have any number of other bugs affecting only small number of customers. With physical bank it is so much easier to make enough noise so at least they spend some time on you. With phone support they can just promise to call you later.
Probably not, but there's nothing stopping me from changing banks if and when that happens. In the UK there's even a system that will automatically migrate all your direct debits.
This is the opposite of my experience. Getting _anything_ sorted with a physical bank takes a long time, prone to error, needs multiple phone calls/in person visits.
The one time I had a problem with Monzo they sorted me out over chat inside the app in ~2 minutes.
Having been a BankSimple Beta customer, and sticking with them until they were acquired by BBVA, you’re screwed when something goes wrong until customer service fixes it. Highly recommend a bank with branches over online only. There is value in being able to go into a branch and having an in-person complaint addressed.
Yeah I don't really understand that statement in the article either. A computer fault can affect any company in the banking industry - irrespective of if they are "app" only.
This is an exciting time for banking startups like this, and I know several of the traditional players are looking to emulate this success via app-only onboarding and less reliance on branches.
Security is a concern, so I wouldn't keep my life savings in it, but they are pretty on the ball compared to the established banks. I know of two absolutely massive banks that have absolutely no clue of what IP addresses they own, let alone what services they have running on them.
I've also used both Monzo and Revolut, and I definitely prefer Revolut. I really recommend anyone in Europe tries them! The crypto integration is interesting, but day to day stuff like an automatic savings pot and interbank rate transfers are really good.
While the apps look nice, I can’t say I see anything that major banks in Sweden haven’t offered already for the past 5 years or so. Are we so far ahead or is online banking in such a shitty state?
How do I, as a resident in Sweden, open an account that can receive a payment in Euros, then spend those euros without having to convert them to Swedish crowns and back, and pay conversion fees each way?
Revolut does this. It also works out 2-3% cheaper for converting SEK to Euros than either SEB or Nordea.
Unfortunately, as it's UK based, it's not at all clear if Revolut will continue to exist in its current form after brexit.
It's probably the same in Sweden, in Croatia you can have a foreign currency account that holds, well, foreign currencies. They can hold multiple kinds of foreign currency. As long as the payment receiver is receiving a currency you already posesss, nothing gets converted.
With the mentioned services, you have to be aware that there is a real sense in which, while Monzo and Starling are Banks, Revolut is not a bank. The other two are FSCS protected (1), guaranteeing your deposit up to £85K, but Revolut is not.
Revolut is still a useful foreign exchange service - I find it great for holiday money, but it's not the same kind of account as a bank's current account, and it would be a mistake to use it as if it was.
What are your experiences of neobanks for business accounts in the UK? I'm looking for something that will make managing expenses/VAT returns automatic, hopefully connects to Zero or Wave via a real API (and not Yodlee) and is FCSC protected.
Which one is the best?
-Starling
-TransferWise Borderless Business account
-Revolution Business
Do any of them offer interest on cash balances on business account?
> The systems failure in April, affecting nearly two million TSB customers, was a breaking point for Mr. Stevenson. He moved his money to Monzo, a British start-up that is among a growing number in Europe offering checking accounts and A.T.M. cards, but lack physical branches — everything is done through an app.
I don't quite understand this logic. Sure there was a very inconvenient failure. But the reaction is the move your money away from established banks with thousands of employees to an app-based startup? No, not for me, thank you.
The key thing with TSB was that none of their thousands of employees could fix the problems for weeks in end, so it appears many customers have come to the realisation that they should not be with a bank that cannot rectify issues, and thus they are looking elsewhere.
You seem to be trying to signal that you're conservative. Thus in this scenario, you would leave TSB and go to another established bank with thousands of employees - and maybe, despite their legacy systems, you'd be fine.
The original person in the example though has reached the point where they're leaving and they're willing to try something new. They won't actually be at greater risk of loss, since there's a well established ombudsman and UK banks have a guarantee (FSCS), so then it becomes a matter of inconvenience from any bank mistakes (until they're rectified) and the level of features - with modern systems, it's entirely likely the startup app-only bank will do better on both these points. So it's not the sort of gamble you seem to think it is after all...
I'd love to see what TSB's tech stack looks like now. I've worked on data migration projects with financial institutions in the past and the mountains of technical debt are truly terrifying. If TSB have gone through all of this pain and emerged at the other end as a truly modern bank without all the historical cruft I'd be seriously tempted to move over to them.
Don't get me wrong - I'm firmly in the "don't fix it if it ain't broke" camp and have no problem at all with 40-year-old COBOL code handling my transactions. But in my experience plenty of this code is broke and the amount of manual intervention to make things work would have a lot of people keeping their money under their mattress if they saw it first hand.
If TSB have gone through all of this pain and emerged at the other end as a truly modern bank without all the historical cruft I'd be seriously tempted to move over to them
They haven't eliminated it, they just moved from Lloyds cruft to Sabadell cruft.
Churn is triggered by outages and other bad emotional experiences. It's rarely fully rational. There's a revenge drive involved. In this case, it seems to be pointed against the whole class of incumbent, traditional operators. Moving to another of them would have not satisfied that drive.
Not in the UK specifically, but as a US citizen living in the EU I've had small online only banks close my account or refuse my business because dealing with the paperwork that comes with having US citizens as customers just isn't worth their time and effort.
By the way, if you're in the EU, bunq is a similar mobile challenger bank but based in the Netherlands and serving all of SEPA (if you're in the Eurozone you can use them as your main bank; I live in a non-Euro EU country so hold an account just for the hell of it).
Disclaimer: I have multiple friends who work at Monzo.