Will the cash in your pocket exist in the future?
They way we spend money is changing. Less people use hard monetary currency than ever before and more transactions happen digitally every day. Does this mean the end for money?
Current accounts aren’t ‘cool’. People don’t wait excitedly outside a Natwest branch to receive their cash ISA. In fact, quite the opposite: normally the only time you see a queue outside a bank is after a financial disaster.
Nevertheless, over 14,550 people are waiting in a digital line for their Monzo Bank card at the time of writing this. And everywhere you look Monzo’s eye-catching “Hot Coral” coloured cards have been appearing in people’s wallets. Seemingly every time someone whips one out to buy a coffee, Monzo gets another bank-convert.
‘It’s a very mission-driven app and bank,’ says Tom Blomfield, 31, co-founder and CEO of Monzo Bank. Monzo is a challenger bank for the smartphone generation. Rather than investing in physical branches, this bank just has an app that sends you notifications with emojis for each transaction, letting you know when you’ve spent too much on all those millennial coffees.
