Perhaps they are now pivoting to more of the “Monzo strategy” of not bothering with that, and instead just trying to take the profitable part of people’s banking away from the big banks?
Switching in itself doesn’t make them money, but it does obviously mean people are likely to use the account for more things which will make them money.
I do agree it won’t help as they look to “the next frontier” of attracting “normal” non-fintech enthusiast customers.
Potentially yeah, but I’ve seen little evidence of that working for Monzo and with Starlings moves in the mortgage market recently it’s suggested to me that they’re looking to go down a more traditional route of selling more profitable products to their current account customers - but who knows.
To be honest my suspicions are it might be about improving some figures ahead of a potential stock market float.
I always thought they were looking for the traditional route too.
Then again, if certain customers are always going to cost you more than they bring in, do you really want them as customers?
I do believe Starling are heading in the right direction as far as general banking goes.
If they can pull off being a one stop shop for banking, loans, mortgages and (one day) credit cards, then I do feel that they really will stand a chance of eating into the legacy bank’s market share more than ever.
I know others may not agree, but as far as disrupting the “established” banking market, I feel that Starling has done an awful lot more than many others.
No of course not, but if I’m right this may put people off who may be profitable from ever joining.
Like a retailer selling a loss-leading product, they know some customers will lose them a lot of money but the idea is that enough customers that are tempted in by the loss-leader buy enough other things to make it worth it.
Does this actually happen that often these days? Maybe in the past… but does it actually happen that often anymore
I get the psychological, some people like having those things even if they’ve never used it and never will use it. I wonder how much they thought of that
A few years ago I could have envisioned potentially selling a car as you suggested that would go over that limit. These days… if your not going to send the money to my bank I’m not interested in your cash as someone else will send money to my bank.
Also wonder if this is to help reduce misuse of bank accounts for business purposes
I’m sure it does still happen - if you want a non-reversible transaction, cash is still king. You just need to make sure the notes aren’t counterfeits.
It does happen, I’m just thinking realistically how often does it happen for the average person? Not sure what the data is one it, maybe one of the annual reports one of the finances orgs put out shows more.
Anecdotal but I just don’t know anyone who’s made any substantial cash deposit … in years frankly. A few hundred a year maybe, never mind selling anything for large sums of cash. I still think £1k might be a bit to low.
Banks transfers aren’t automatically reversible or easily reversible.
This would be a red flag for me if someone wasn’t willing to do a bank transfer and instead wants me to handle large sums of money for no good reason.
I don’t have the answers to any of that but my thoughts are why worry about it when there are plenty of competitors about offering ‘unlimited’ cash deposits.
And yet when they are reversible that’s potentially your bank account closed with it. I’d be just as reluctant to have some random person I don’t know transfer a large amount of money in to my account as you would taking a large amount of cash off a person.
I’ve nothing to add to the conversation, except it’s a really good read. Thanks 
Well, you do now 
I deposited a few k earlier this year. (Well, it was actually 1k that I deposited and withdrew as cash three times - but that’s semantics 
)
Not into a fintech though - had no interest in getting my account blocked 
Point taken, although I suppose Starling are working on the assumption that most people wouldn’t notice or care, since few read T&Cs fully and anyone opening an account wouldn’t necessarily know about, so couldn’t be put off, by it?
I do think your argument of the psychology of limits is something valid, but I question what the real impact would be.
I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see - I assume Starling will have thought about it and come to the decision that it won’t have much impact, but in reality nobody will know until some time after it has been implemented.
That’s exactly what I meant 
In all likelihood, it would take more than this to make me switch away from Starling. But if they start introducing fees for other things that were previously free, I’d quite happily move my banking elsewhere. The main appeal with Starling is they haven’t charged for things that other fintechs do, and they haven’t applied limits in the way others have. This goes against how they have operated so far. They will post a profit next year, I don’t get the timing of this decision or the need for it. Surely the vast majority of their revenue comes from business customers and Banking-as-a-Service - I just don’t see the need to charge personal customers for things like this. If some people are “abusing” the facility, then target them. I don’t think £1,000 is a reasonable threshold at all.
True!
Only time will tell if this is a niche fee to help cover costs, as with the fees for large Euro balances (where the ECB charge negative interest on overnight deposits) or if it is the beginning of a slow “chipping away” of what comes as standard for free.
Hopefully it’s the former and not the latter.
What does it say at the bottom of that screen, below the “need help with this transaction?” ?
Its milk & more
I’ve given up sending suggestions to them. Really disappointing as the transaction feed used to look great.
I contacted support and they said they passed it onto the merchant team but nothing has changed
