A tale of two banks

I was a member of HSBC Bank for over 20 years. They lured me in as a teenager (probably with an offer of £20 cash, which I have since repaid a great many times over), and I stayed that long because I never saw a reason to change. It did the job of giving me somewhere to collect money and the means to spend it, and beyond that all I really needed was for it not to bother me.
Then in 2013 or so it started to bother me. Probably the banking crisis got me thinking about banks too much, or I’d just reached breaking point in repeatedly getting extorted for overspending by a few pennies. Whatever the catalyst, it was time for a change. When I finally made the switch, I never looked back. It was one of the objectively “correct” decisions I’ve made in my life, reinforced by HSBC’s complete apathy to my departure (I got a templated letter half-heartedly suggesting I could return to them in the future if I wanted, and that was that. Smell you later). But this tale is not about that bank.
It was Metro Bank that won me over. It won me over with its fresh approach (open on bank holidays! Open on weekends!), its “no stupid bank rules” mantra, and its personality. If I’m going to get screwed over by a bank, I figured at the very least it should be a scrappy upstart trying to make a difference. I signed up in an afternoon and all of my direct debits and other automated payments magically updated themselves.
For the most part, it did an exceptional job of staying out of my way. Its Internet banking system was refreshingly modern (at least back in 2010), Twitter Bootstrapified (or some good imitation of Bootstrap), simple UI with big buttons and minimal fuss. It hasn’t aged particularly well in the intervening years, but it holds up considerably better than PayPal, and I daresay whatever passes for HSBC’s online banking system these days makes Metro’s design look worthy of the front page on Dribbble.
Still, frustrations abound, in particular with their terrible password policies (for the longest time it was not possible to paste into the password field when logging on, and to this day I have no idea how to change the password I set up when I joined), and their initial iPhone app offering, which was largely unusable, until they recently updated it to use TouchID and generally not be a dick to you when you want to try and send money somewhere.
Still the sense of general apathy with Metro set in after a while, being something of a nuisance I had to deal with once in a while, but otherwise not thinking about it at all.
Around a year or so after having switched to Metro, I got into a conversation with someone (who was from the US, but staying in the UK for a shoot over the course of several months) about budgeting software. I bemoaned that there was nothing out there that was as good as the (discontinued for several years at this point) application Microsoft Money. In the US, it seemed the buzz was all about Quicken, an application that had not been available in the UK (at least not for Mac) for a number of years.
I set out in search of something, anything that looked good, worked with GBP as a first-class currency, ran on Mac, and most importantly, would pull transactions from Metro automatically. Because let’s face it, that is the part of budgeting that is for suckers.
My search quickly ran dry, and in my desperation, I turned to iOS as a platform for budgeting software. There I found a few potential options, but they were unanimously vague about their connectivity and automation features, were ridiculously expensive (most have the nerve to charge you separately for an iPhone and iPad version), or required a subscription (the irony of making regular payments for an app to track my regular payments was simply too heavy for me to bear), and at least one required you to sync all of your financial data through their own servers instead of iCloud which seems like a frankly ludicrous ask. I gave up, thinking I’d try again in a year or so.
One good thing came out of that research though, which was that I learned about Monzo.
Monzo (then called “Mondo”) wasn’t really a bank (at least, it wasn’t back then), nor was it a budgeting app. It was an app that you could put money into, and you’d have a card (effectively a debit card) that would let you spend that money. There was a system whereby you could sign up to get access, though it was made clear that there’d be a long wait. It wasn’t clear if that was just a marketing ploy startups seem to like to use now to build interest. But it was interesting and low-risk enough to warrant signing up.
A few days later I received an email that there was going to be an event where you’d be able to get access to the app if you turned up. It felt a little bit shady, but I did some research and it seemed legit enough to be worth at least turning up to see what they said.
February 25, 2016 was a life-changing event. That evening I went to the Monzo office (along with 50 or so others) to get access to the app, and more importantly, the card to go with it. I’d already had the app installed, but it was essentially useless until you had the card to go with it. Once I was given the card, I had to transfer £100 to activate it (by scanning my Metro card with the app, so easy! and which then became money you could spend on the card), listen to the CEO talk for a bit about his vision for the future of banking (there was a lot of banking sucks, am I right? which resonated with most of us) and then pose for a photo (which I presume exists on Twitter somewhere, I have no idea). Then I left with a new card with £100 to spend on it.
I didn’t use it until the next day, and then it was to buy breakfast. It worked like any other contactless bank card I’ve ever owned (albeit a bright pink one), tap on the payment machine to pay for something under £30, or stick the card in the slot and enter the pin (which had been texted to me on activation of the card, emoji and all). There was one noticeable difference though- less than a second after tapping the card to make the payment, my phone buzzed, notifying me that I just spent £2.50. Before the receipt had even started printing.
Going into the app, it showed that my balance was now £97.50 and I could tap on the transaction to categorise it, as well as see information like other transactions at the same place (none at that point) and a map. I started using it all the time, whenever I could. It meant that I had to top it up by transferring more money from my Metro account, but that was fairly low friction.
Compared to my Metro card, there were plenty of problems. Some places would reject the card outright, even though there was enough money on it. A couple of times over the last two years there have been service outages, meaning the card wouldn’t work anywhere, at all until the issue got resolved. I got into the habit of carrying my Metro card as a backup.
It was unreliable, a poor excuse for a payment device really, but it didn’t matter a jot. The benefits massively outweighed the inconveniences, and there have been situations where being able to confirm immediately that a particular payment did or didn’t go through have saved me a lot of stress.
A few months later an update to the app went out which had a new “targets” feature, which allowed you to allocate budgets per category. It displays how you’re doing on your targets, warns you if you’re overspending in a particular category, but most of all gives you insight into where your money is going. A month after using it I was able to cut my spending in half.
For the first time in my life I feel that my bank has an important role to play. It shouldn’t be something that is an inconvenience that requires occasional attention. It should be something that has a positive impact on your life in some way. And really, maybe this is true of technology in general. Metro was a refreshing counter to traditional banking. But Monzo was a revolutionary one.
Disclaimer: I personally own a small stake in Monzo, acquired in their first round of public crowd-funding.