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Y Combinator invests in Monzo through its Continuity Fund

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Re: Y Combinator invests in Monzo through its Continuity Fund

#131

Post by Jonnax »

sambe wrote: post #93
Liquid_Fire wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the killer feature is foreign currency transactions with no fees at the MasterCard exchange rate, both online and abroad. My "traditional" bank charges me a flat fee and a percentage for any transactions in other currencies.

I don't know what the MasterCard exchange rate is. However, someone recently told me regarding their credit card: "they give me the wholesale exchange rate, which is great". It turned out not to be so great (~1% wide market). It's good not to pay an additional fee/spread on top, but it can still be a poor deal overall.

This is their convertor below.

$10000 dollars cost £7,867.91

I googled $100 USD to GBP and it comes out as: £7,859.50

Percentage difference: 0.106947%

https://www.mastercard.co.uk/en-gb/consumers/get-support/con...

Re: Y Combinator invests in Monzo through its Continuity Fund

#132

Post by Jonnax »

collyw wrote: post #123
shawabawa3 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - no physical branches Massive positive for me. I've never had a good experience going to a physical bank branch (if they're ever even open), and now I'll never have to go again

Taking away the option of doing something is positive?

One of my bank accounts didn't let me change my address online. I had to go to the bank and do it.

A branchless bank must have an alternative

Re: Y Combinator invests in Monzo through its Continuity Fund

#133

Post by rdlou »

randomvectors wrote: post #14
RickS wrote: post #6

I'm very hopeful for Monzo, with some caveats. They have a lot of fascinating and useful DNA having gotten started in the UK before the US. The UK's regulatory environment for digital banking is leagues ahead of America's, w/r/t data access, APIs, etc. If they can persist UK style data features through their American rollout, they'll have something no other American bank currently offers. While my strong suspicion is…

This is where they actually bring value right? - Delivering a good banking product outside of the UK. Because as a UK customer I see no reason to switch after trying Monzo for a couple of months. Positives: - a nicer mobile banking app Negatives: - no credit cards and no option to top up using a credit card from another bank - no physical branches Everything else is comparable to most other banks in the UK. Which isn…

For me, having no physical branches has been ace. When I was with barclays, I could call them up, spend 45 minutes on the phone to someone, only to be told I have to go to a branch to get a statement (or something stupid like that). I'd then walk to a branch, stand in line for 20 minutes, to be told they can't do that at that branch and I'd have to ring up some other number. That sort of thing happened regularly enough (probably twice in my last year) to make me lose trust in the competance of the people I was speaking to.

Monzo having 1 point of contact means they can't push you off onto someone else/a branch/a different phone number etc. And every time I've used the help chat on there I've had me issues resolved rapidly.

When I was in mexico, a restaurants card machine said a payment didn't go through, but my monzo app said it did. So i kept the receipt and did the transaction again. This time their card machine said it worked. I kept the receipt for a week in case the £60 showed back up in my account but it didn't. Within 2 minutes on the chat with monzo, £60 was just put back into my account. No fuss. I guarantee you couldn't pick up a phone/go to a branch with a standard bank and get the money back that quickly

Re: Y Combinator invests in Monzo through its Continuity Fund

#134

Post by krn »

easytiger wrote: post #129
krn wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Revolut is not profitable. It reports an operating loss. It reported an operating loss for 2017, because it stopped losing money on monthly basis only in December 2017.

> It reported operating loss for 2017, because it stopped losing money on monthly basis only in December 2017. What are you talking about? That's gibberish. It lost about £15million in 2017

> It lost about £15million in 2017

If a company was losing money for the first 11 months out of 12, that's an expected result.

Re: Y Combinator invests in Monzo through its Continuity Fund

#135

Post by grey-area »

namdnay wrote: post #128
matthewmacleod wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point I was making is that none of those things are very interesting to me – I use a credit card when travelling, don't travel enough for banking to be a constraint, and don't need virtual cards. Also, note that there are already zero ATM fees in the UK, Monzo does £200 of fee-free foreign withdrawals/month in line with the Revolut free account, and cashback is only 1% outside of Europe, if you are paying for the…

Don’t you get hit by international fees when using your credit card abroad? As a regular business traveler living in europe, Revolut has saved me a fortune (I even turn a small profit with the Metal cashback)

Don’t you get hit by international fees when using your credit card abroad?

No. There are fees for withdrawing cash over £200, but not using the card abroad.

Re: Y Combinator invests in Monzo through its Continuity Fund

#136

Post by rchaud »

nicoburns wrote: post #118
rchaud wrote: post #116

> The company is one of several so-called challenger banks taking advantage of the growing shift among consumers toward handling their finances on a smartphone. As opposed to handling their finances on a website, like people have been doing for the past decade? Even the smallest credit unions have apps these days. What is "fintech" about this? > The branchless bank is now making £4 on each customer it signs up to the…

Not sure I agree with this. A huge number of young people I know in the UK have switched to Monzo as their primary bank account. The business model is simple: the same as any other bank. Their competitive advantage is: 1. Having better technical capabilities than traditional banks (they have apps, but they're usually limited and clunky). 2. Not having physical branches, and the associated costs.

The article was very light on details, so I'd appreciate if could you elaborate on the technical capabilities of the app. I get suspicious when I see comments like:

> One reason that led Y Combinator to invest, Hariharan said, “was the traction with which they hit 2 million users in the U.K., with engagement metrics that almost look like a social network.”

It's a bank app. I can't speak for most people, but I don't open my bank app more than a couple of times a month; it's to pay my CC bill, and to make the occasional bank to bank transfer. If I'm spending a lot of time in the app, I'm probably encountering a problem of some kind.

I also can't link "app engagement" with revenue. Banks make money on mortgages, lines of credit and other financial products. I suppose daily logins allow them to advertise this heavily (my bank does it too, and I hate it), but to draw a line from A to B is a bit of a stretch.

Re: Y Combinator invests in Monzo through its Continuity Fund

#137

Post by cameronbrown »

samwhiteUK wrote: post #76
matthewmacleod wrote: post #67

I know there's a bit of scepticism about Monzo in particular, but here's the deal from my perspective as a customer and crowdfunder: it's a straightforward banking service, and has a great app (which is where I do basically all banking anyway). That's basically it. Fee-free foreign transactions are a nice positive too, though I'm not that bothered. Some of the larger banks have begun introducing features to compete –…

Bingo. The fact that I can see all my transactions, automatically categorised, in an app that is much prettier, full-featured and simple than the crap that Halifax put out, is brilliant. Combine that with a simple setup process, never having to interact with humans or call centres, and add tha bility to automatically save, interact with IFTTT etc and you have a very compelling package and I hope they continue to do w…

> never having to interact with humans or call centres

Many people would argue this is a tech company's biggest flaw.

Re: Y Combinator invests in Monzo through its Continuity Fund

#138

Post by easytiger »

krn wrote: post #134
easytiger wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It reported operating loss for 2017, because it stopped losing money on monthly basis only in December 2017. What are you talking about? That's gibberish. It lost about £15million in 2017

> It lost about £15million in 2017 If a company was losing money for the first 11 months out of 12, that's an expected result.

> If a company was losing money for the first 11 months out of 12, that's an expected result.

I dunno what you think you are trying to achieve. Revolut is not profitable

Re: Y Combinator invests in Monzo through its Continuity Fund

#139

Post by martinald »

Scirra_Tom wrote: post #112
martinald wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transferwise can give you a US ACH account with a USD balance which you can then convert and send. Not sure if that helps?

Paypal need a USD account in USA, with a bank statement from said account showing your business name. I don't think that would do it.

Seems that it works. It is a USD bank.

https://www.icomparefx.com/how-to-send-money-from-paypal-to-...

Re: Y Combinator invests in Monzo through its Continuity Fund

#140

Post by nothrabannosir »

grey-area wrote: post #135
namdnay wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t you get hit by international fees when using your credit card abroad? As a regular business traveler living in europe, Revolut has saved me a fortune (I even turn a small profit with the Metal cashback)

Don’t you get hit by international fees when using your credit card abroad? No. There are fees for withdrawing cash over £200, but not using the card abroad.

Grand parent said they use a “credit card” abroad, implying they don’t use Monzo, or wouldn’t need Revolut. Monzo is a debit card.
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