• About & Contact Us
  • SEO Community

Ulancer.com

    • Latest Stories

      What is new?

    • Meet the startups that pitched at EF’s 10th Demo Day in London

      September 27, 2018

    • Rally Rd., the app that lets you invest in classic cars, raises $7M Series A

      September 27, 2018

  • News
  • How to’s
  • Writing
  • Startups
  • Jobs
  • More
    • CMS Tools
    • APPS
    • Web Resources
      • Advertising
      • Firefox
      • Scripts
      • Tools

Challenger bank Monzo launches accounts for 16-18 year olds

  • by Ulancer Contributor
  • In Startups
  • — 6 Aug, 2018

When weighing up the likely success of challenger banks in the U.K., two predominant schools of thought emerge.

Those who are bullish say that incumbent banks provide a lousy user experience, rip off customers, and innovate incredibly slowly — and therefore are ripe for the taking. Challenger banks just need to focus on what they do best and word of mouth-led switching will follow.

And then there are people who are less convinced who say that most consumers are happy enough with their current bank account and see no reason to switch. Besides, anything innovative a challenger does will be copied by incumbents eventually anyway.

But what if switching was only one means to customer acquisition? One argument I’ve sometimes made is that grabbing customers from a competing bank isn’t the only way to grow a challenger bank. Another customer segment is people who don’t have an existing current account, such as recent immigrants or young people who need to open their very first bank account.

In fact, incumbent banks have long targeted students, for example, with attractive student overdrafts or by setting up shop on university campuses. That’s how Barclays first won my business and why I still lazily bank with them today.

Enter challenger bank Monzo, which early on in its existence experimented with a Monzo ambassador program at a number of universities, with only limited success. Today the fintech is moving the funnel forward slightly by making its digital current account offering available to 16-18 year olds, opening up the bank to more than 1.5 million new young people.

Monzo says that 16 and 17 year old customers can sign up for a Monzo bank account today by downloading the app. They’ll then receive a contactless debit card in the post the next working day. Certain banking features, such as overdrafts and spending on gambling, will be blocked until customers turn 18.

With more than 860,000 registered account holders and set to cross 1 million accounts in the next few months, Monzo has employed a number strategies to grow customers, with a heavy emphasis on viral features and a fresh, young brand.

These have included making friend-to-friend payments easy, either to people who already bank with the startup, or via the Monzo.me service, which gives users a payment link to share with friends.

The idea, as Monzo co-founder Tom Blomfield (picture above) often explains, is that unlike traditional incumbent banks that basically have zero network effects (perhaps beyond joint accounts), the challenger bank is designed to become more useful the more people who join it.

More recently, the challenger bank launched ‘Nearby Friends’, geolocation functionality that uses Bluetooth to let you see anyone else that uses Monzo who is nearby so that you can initiate a payment without needing their phone number to be in your contact book first.


News source

You might also like...

  • Stripe moves into brick-and-mortar payments with Terminal 17 Sep, 2018
  • Women’s Safety XPRIZE $1M winner is a smart, simple panic button 7 Jun, 2018
  • Lyft goes biking, Airbnb is going public (eventually), big money for software robots, and Juul 6 Jul, 2018
  • MoviePass parent drops 31% on looming cash crunch 8 May, 2018
  • Previous story Airbnb for Work now accounts for 15 percent of bookings
  • Next story How Contento Can Help Market Yourself as a Freelancer
  • RSS
    Receive Freebies & Latest Posts Directly To Your Email - it's Free!

    • Recent Posts
    • Most Popular
    • Comments
    • 7hrCggmJ-AMMeet the startups that pitched at EF’s 10th Demo Day in LondonSeptember 27, 2018
    • oNo38LV2tQIRally Rd., the app that lets you invest in classic cars, raises $7M Series ASeptember 27, 2018
    • Nearby.gifBerkanan is a Bluetooth-powered group messaging appSeptember 27, 2018
    • 2122.pngVinay Gupta to talk about Mattereum at Disrupt BerlinSeptember 27, 2018
    • slider_wp_03Best collection of WordPress Slider PluginsJuly 5, 2010
    • Joomla template builderTop 8 Free Joomla Template GeneratorsJuly 19, 2011
    • 40+ Best WordPress Plugins for Comments40+ Best WordPress Plugins for CommentsJune 18, 2011
    • wptheme2A Collection of Free WordPress ThemesJuly 11, 2010
    • Jason Hall on:Circle launches its stablecoin
    • Jason Hall on:Circle launches its stablecoin
    • Bharat Sarkari Naukri on:Spotify acquires online music studio Soundtrap as it goes after creators
    • PMP on:Online learning platform Unacademy gets $21M Series C from Sequoia India, SAIF and Nexus
  • Staff Picks

    • slider_wp_03Best collection of WordPress Slider PluginsJuly 5, 2010
    • Joomla template builderTop 8 Free Joomla Template GeneratorsJuly 19, 2011
    • 40+ Best WordPress Plugins for Comments40+ Best WordPress Plugins for CommentsJune 18, 2011
  • Recent Posts

    • Meet the startups that pitched at EF’s 10th Demo Day in London
    • Rally Rd., the app that lets you invest in classic cars, raises $7M Series A
  • Search Our Blog

  • Ulancer is an insightful freelance blog and resource site. We provide intuitive articles that cover Photoshop tutorials, time-saving management tips covering a broad range of topics. We also have an active freelance community forum, there you can meet other freelancers that share your common interest, socialize and chat about freelance trending news as the occurred.

© Copyright 2013 Ulancer.