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Mondo bank taking £1m crowdfunding investment

getmondo.co.uk

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Re: Mondo bank taking £1m crowdfunding investment

#21
post #14

As usual with these things: What about app/server security. Simple token verification is prone to abuse (malware) and spoofing is becoming a bigger issue on mobile only platforms than ever before. Server abuse is difficult, but not impossible and since getting a banking licence usually does not verify any security measures, I'm wondering what they already did (or didn't) do. (I'm well aware of the state-of-the-art, a…

I wonder why you got downvoted for this, for me security is a key concern for the challenger banks.

What Mondo is (from my reading) trying to do is very cool but quite ambitious. A new bank in 2016 will be a serious target for quite sophisticated attackers so they're going to have to do app/inf/ops security very well do avoid damage.

On the flip-side they have the once in a lifetime golden opportunity of a green-field deployment to actually get security baked into their systems before they're live without a load of legacy cruft holding them back.

Re: Mondo bank taking £1m crowdfunding investment

#22
post #18

Very interesting. As far as Mondo goes, it's great so far - am on the alpha program and have been using it for almost a month now and very impressed by it. Using it abroad was the main selling point, as that's always a mess otherwise. Basically how banking should be in a modern day and age, even though it's only with a prepaid debit card at the moment.

Can you or anyone else using the alpha give a bit more detail about what you love about it?

How is the app compared to say Barclays or some other mainstream bank? Is everything via the app rather than the website?

They have an API I think which is pretty cool for a bank, and I'm seriously interested. Disappointed to hear they won't be doing business accounts too, but I guess they want to stay focussed for now.

Re: Mondo bank taking £1m crowdfunding investment

#25
post #18

Very interesting. As far as Mondo goes, it's great so far - am on the alpha program and have been using it for almost a month now and very impressed by it. Using it abroad was the main selling point, as that's always a mess otherwise. Basically how banking should be in a modern day and age, even though it's only with a prepaid debit card at the moment.

Can you or anyone else using the alpha give a bit more detail about what you love about it? How is the app compared to say Barclays or some other mainstream bank? Is everything via the app rather than the website? They have an API I think which is pretty cool for a bank, and I'm seriously interested. Disappointed to hear they won't be doing business accounts too, but I guess they want to stay focussed for now.

Someone just posted a write-up https://medium.com/@johnwmidgley/going-fullmondo-8a536bc758a...

Re: Mondo bank taking £1m crowdfunding investment

#26
>We aren’t a bank yet, but we are applying to the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for authorisation to become one.

I don't want to be negative, but this is a huge consideration.

After 2008, unfortunately, regulations have made it much more difficult to incorporate a bank and comply with the law. Is a million enough for that?

Re: Mondo bank taking £1m crowdfunding investment

#27

>We aren’t a bank yet, but we are applying to the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for authorisation to become one. I don't want to be negative, but this is a huge consideration. After 2008, unfortunately, regulations have made it much more difficult to incorporate a bank and comply with the law. Is a million enough for that?

>After 2008, unfortunately, regulations have made it much more difficult to incorporate a bank

The capital requirements to launch a bank have actually been relaxed since the financial crash. The government wants more competition in the industry and the regulator has been working to make that happen.

Re: Mondo bank taking £1m crowdfunding investment

#28

>We aren’t a bank yet, but we are applying to the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for authorisation to become one. I don't want to be negative, but this is a huge consideration. After 2008, unfortunately, regulations have made it much more difficult to incorporate a bank and comply with the law. Is a million enough for that?

Other way round. UK have regulators have realised there is a lack of competition in banking arena and have made it much easier to start new banks. Several challenger banks have already received their licenses under the new rules

Re: Mondo bank taking £1m crowdfunding investment

#29
post #20

The fact that Mondo does not yet currently have a banking license in the UK is a big risk. If you're thinking of investing consider the value of that investment should the licence application fail.

It is unlikely to fail irrevocably because, as some of the background articles explain, there is evidence that UK regulators are actively trying to foster competition at the moment, "the Prudential Regulation Authority’s fast-track licensing regime"[0], partly in response to past abuse of trust by the incumbents. I was impressed with UK response to recent crises, issuing reports detailing very concrete measures to resolve institutional problems. As so much of the UK economy relies upon finance, they do have a bit of a reputation to uphold and cannot simply say one thing and do another indefinitely. At some point they have to give... it's a license, not exactly Elgin's marbles.

[0] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/first-direct...

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