Monzo Lost £6.7M Last Year: And This Should Terrify Traditional Banks | Hacker News Reader

Monzo Lost £6.7M Last Year: And This Should Terrify Traditional Banks

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No idea how the article justifies traditional banks should be terrified because Monzo lost £6.7M?

Because of what they are achieving on a tiny net loss vs their peers.

Not even sure if I would call it an article.

don't know either :/

Agree, garbage article.

Because they are using "the latest technology such as AWS, Docker, Kubernetes and cloud native architecture"

TBH, this shouldn't be sarcasm. Having first hand exposure to finance infra & software architecture.. traditional organisations are crippled by tech debt and decisions made 20-30 years ago!

I'm betting most traditional organisations are envious of being able to start their architecture from scratch.

> With that investment they're building and marketing a disruptive financial services brand. They're creating all of the technology to support a credit card and current account both in the back end systems and front end mobile apps. They are meeting all of the legal and regulatory requirements. They're providing pretty good customer service and assuming all of the infrastructure costs associated with growing and running a company etc.

In other words, they've built a bank with that 6.7m (+ 1.4m the year before) & they're about to launch current accounts, while the legacy banks struggled to add Touch ID protection to their mobile apps in the same time period. You don't think that's significant?

The argument is:

Traditional banks need £6.7m just for toilet paper, but Monzo can (and has) built an entire banking infrastructure complete with regulatory approval for that amount.

This suggests a velocity and efficiency of the upstart that could result in significantly surpassing traditional banks in the service offered, and continuing to advance at a rate at which the banks will never catch up.

[I'm a Monzo customer and like the service, if nothing else because every transaction is tagged with your GPS location from your phone which makes identifying mystery payments much easier. I think it's a force for good in the banking industry, but inevitably the big players will respond to the threat, and that's ok by me]

I just started working for a "traditional bank". To my surprise, we're operating just like Monzo (and other tech startups); small, talented teams working closely with product owners, using the latest and greatest tech (our tech stack is very similar to Monzo's).

The banks aren't stupid. If there's a buck to be saved by switching to a different operating model, they will absolutely swap. In fact, it's already happening.

there is also another company called Revolut in London doing the same thing.

They're very different, they don't have a banking license, don't want one & are mainly focused on international payments, rather than current accounts & an open marketplace.

"don't want one"?

they are offering personal bank accounts and recently, business bank accounts (apparently powered by Barclays).. the growth and interest seems to be not less than Monzo`s, so one would guess they'll have to get their own banking license soon.

I asked google.com what mozno is and haven't found a thing

Monzo, not mozno. It's a startup aiming to provide a replacement for the traditional current account.

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