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Some excellent new tools from Monzo to help safeguard against your phone being stolen.
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Nice, great to see some innovation on this front - easy to see how these will prevent a vast majority of the sort of fraud associated with device theft while not being an inconvenience to the user.
Just need a financial motivation to keep any substantial sums with them now!
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Free Greggs anyone?
It’s pretty obviously just a mechanised slot someone is pushing sausage rolls through.
Yeah but it is great marketing.
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I’ve been really enjoying this marketing campaign. A lot of fun. Tells you everything you need to know about Monzo, without explicitly telling you about Monzo and what they offer.
Those are always my favourite kinds of advertising.
Monzo have also been quite busy of late, doing some good stuff. Like a children’s account that actually looks very good:
And an update on their APP fraud compliance approach ahead of October:
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I like the debit card, but the features look pretty par for the field to me?
I’m sure this will do well for them tho. What you can say of Monzo is they’ve very successfully grabbed the young adult portion of the market which will represent a big opportunity in a few years time, this kind of extends that to young’uns. What they need next IMO is some kind of compelling student offer to bridge the gap.
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So I’ve always felt like there was a very narrow gap in this market, and Monzo’s fits into it beautifully, which was a pleasant surprise, because I didn’t expect this from them. There’s lots of really good options out there, but they all come with some kind of a trade off:
- An ongoing cost (Gohenry)
- Not actually a bank account (Starling, Hyperjar, Revolut etc…)
- a parred back bank account with a non-tailored kids experience (most high streets)
Monzo’s offer here (as I’m understanding it) is a proper bank account, not dissimilar from what you get with a high street, automatically maturing into an adult account at 18. Unlike what you get from the high street options, and more similar to what you get from the fintech competitors, it sounds like it’ll be a feature rich app tailored to Children.
It’s the first I’m aware of to bring the best of both worlds together and offer it for free. An app tailored for kids with the fintech sort of features you’d expect (the best parts of GoHenry and Starling) but in the form of an actual free bank account (the best part of a proper children’s bank account).
But I’m not that attune to these products. Outside of the bigger better known options, it’s entirely possible there’s one that already merges the best of these experiences and I’ve just missed it.
“A bank account for 6-15 year olds, linked to an adult’s Monzo current account” very much infers that this too will not actually be a bank account, but a prepaid card attachment to a grown up account ala Starling Kite or Natwest Rooster.
I’d be very surprised if Monzo (or any bank for that) started offering current accounts to 6 year olds. Six year olds are not normally deemed capable of entering in to banking arrangements of their own.
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Ah, I’ve perhaps interpreted it wrong then.
Just been going through the high street options and they all start at 11, vs 6 with the neobanks and prepaid card solutions.
Starling’s marketing was clearer in that Kite was a connected debit card, not a bank account. Monzo are really pushing the idea that this is an actual account in their wording. The forum post from the product manager on the community even highlights the same gap I noted between the debit card options and traditional child bank accounts.
I’d guess they were talking about functionality (do Kite and Rooster allow the child to have their own app? I thought they did but again, not a parent, so not my ballpark).
Rooster do, I don’t know about Starling Kite.
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Looks like they do, although it is still under the parent’s account. It uses nearby pairing apparently.
https://www.starlingbank.com/current-account/kite-debit-card-for-kids/
How do I set up the kids’ version of the app?
Once your Kite application has been accepted, you can set up the kid’s version of the Starling app, if they have their own device and it’s something you want to do - it’s optional.
The process uses nearby pairing, so make sure you are near each other when completing setup. To set up access to the Starling app, head to the Kite Space in your app, tap ‘Manage Space’, then the button to set up an app for your child and follow the on-screen instructions.
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Yeah, thought so. No idea then. Like I said, will do well for them I’m sure but nothing particularly innovative so far as I can see.
Monzo have launched pensions. They invest it with Blackrock managed funds. I’ll presume the same ones they use for their investing product.
Includes a free consolidation service too, where they’ll go out and find your other pensions and move them over.
No, it appears that they are using target date funds which adjust the share/bond proportion as you get closer to retirement.
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You can get very similar funds with a Vanguard SIPP at a 0.15% platform fee.