What's up you guys, saturday, here now, a few weeks ago, i released a bunch of videos where i reviewed all the different challenger banks that are available in uk. I went and opened an account with each single one here, uh some of them i actually opened accounts with others that didn't make it into those reviews. I actually have one more coming up. That's going to come out.

I think next week at some point, but anyway i went and tested literally all the different bank accounts that are available. That's kind of the aim of this channel to try to show people the good things and the bad things about all these different accounts. But the time has come, i need to go and close all these different accounts, because i don't actually want to have a huge number of different accounts against my name. I don't want to manage all these different accounts.

I don't want to have the risk of having these accounts and statements and everything else anyway. I just don't really need them, so i decided that i need to go and actually just consolidate and go and pick the one that i want to go with. I had obviously traditional bank accounts with several banks as well, and i'm gon na just cover that briefly. But out of all of these i decided i'm gon na go and just pick one so which one am i gon na pick what i'm gon na do with the rest, i'm gon na tell you exactly what i'm going to do and why i'm going to do It in this video - let's roll now to start with, just be so that you don't have to wait until the end of the video.

I'm not going to do anything like that. I am going to keep one and the one i'm going to keep is styling. That's probably not surprising to you if you saw some of my reviews, starling scored the best out of all the different accounts when i went and ranked them according to the different criteria. And since then, things have actually moved even more in starling's favor, which i'm going to cover when i go through these ones the time.

So that's the one i'm going to keep i'm actually going to go and close all the rest of them because i actually feel like. I don't need the functionality and i don't need any of the other accounts. I'm going to go through them one at a time and talk exactly why i'm going to be closing each one. So i can't get all the cards out because some of them have the numbers printed on them, but anyway, let's start with the first one.

The first one is bunk. Now this is the one that you probably haven't really heard about. It is available in the uk. It isn't really a uk challenger bank.

It works under a european banking license, i'm not going to go into the depths of that and it kind of works in a weird way where you're really dealing in euros. Even though you're based in the uk there's lots of fees attached, the functionality is really poor. The way the app works is really poor. There's huge amounts of costs involved if you're just wanting to do really basic transactional things.

There really isn't much to say about this: that's good, i'm not a big fan of the way they're doing their marketing and, as a result, i just think because they genuinely haven't made any effort whatsoever to try to make a genuine uk bank account, despite operating in The uk, having a uk english website and trying to actually attract uk customers - i just don't see unless you are a uk person who is living in europe or some other type of thing like that. I don't see why you would ever pick one of these accounts. So this one is getting closed. Um.

I will not have that account by the end of today. The next one that i want to talk about is monies. Now monies is a weird one, it isn't a bank account and i actually thought before i started that i would like this one quite a lot. They have a whole lot of marketing and pr about the tech behind it.

They certainly get into a lot of publications into a lot of media and i had really high expectations for it. I like the way that they've, structured their pricing and the cards look really nice and simple and clean. I'm kind of like a fan of that. I just never really got to grips with the account.

I don't really understand how they design some of the features. It looks like and feels like to me from using this app and trying to go back into it and trying to try out some of the features. It looks to me like the classic example of people who are developers or people who are sort of really into the product working within the business, designing how the thing works without thinking, how would somebody who isn't us who isn't working on this every single day, who's? Just a regular user who hasn't seen this thing before, how would they understand the way it should work? How would they go and actually use it? You know from start from first registering you can stuff like that and, as a result, there's a lot of stuff in this account where there's just highly unintuitive things in the app. I didn't like the way the app phone worked.

I didn't like the way the existing app worked and everything just feels just that bit clunky. It's just like not very well thought out again um, there's, there's not much in the monies account that i can't get anywhere else. In fact, there isn't really anything. The one thing that i will note is, i personally have had no negative experience other than just like user experience stuff with monies, but i have had several people, i think, probably somewhere like five to ten people in comments on videos to do with this review and Other bank reviews telling me that they've had their accounts blocked by monies and monies is not answering any queries and they are out of pocket and they don't know what to do.

Unfortunately, there's not much that i can help with on that front and the people need to deal with the company and then deal with the ombudsman or the fca or or take it to a court if they need to. I don't not privy to those circumstances, but the fact that there wasn't one or two in fact there were several - is kind of questionable. Now it could be that there's some kind of campaign trying to say something negative about monies. I don't know i don't know exactly why this is happening, but i saw a few different comments on my videos from people who have had issues and that's not a good sign, because i didn't have any of these about the other accounts.

Next, let's talk about revolut revolut is an incredibly popular account. Lots of young people really like it and my problem with revolut is, i don't think revolut themselves really know what it is, that they're trying to do they're trying to do a little bit of everything. There's a little bit of a current account functionality, but not everything. It's not a real current account, there's a little bit of trading, but it doesn't quite do everything that you would want from a trading platform.

You can't trade, everything and there's fees involved if you're wanting to trade more and it's not quite as easy or transparent, as probably you would have liked, or you would expect, if you're using actual trading apps there's all these other things there's a money exchange. They kind of started as a money exchange card and using for free abroad, and a lot of people continue using that because that's probably their strongest feature they're sort of spending money abroad and sending money abroad and doing all of that stuff. But my kind of concern is for each of those features. I have an app which actually does better than revenue so for trading shares.

I can use trading two on two. I can use etoro, i can use free trade and all of those are better. They offer you far more features, they're better priced. They offer you interesting things that the revolution doesn't do same for sending money abroad.

I actually have better value better priced alternatives in the market that are specialized in sending money abroad. If i want a current account with all the features of the current account again, there are better options. The two that are remaining over here - styling, your monster - are definitely in there. So the thing i don't like is they dabble in so many different things and some people might prefer it.

Some people might prefer to have one account, which does everything so that you don't have to have different apps and move money around and do all that. But i personally kind of like, if i'm doing something for that something to be the best possible option. So that's why i am closing the revenue to count down um, i'm hoping that maybe they'll develop into something a bit more intriguing and we'll get to there. But the they seem to be going down the direction of trying to charge money for perks, which i don't really consider as perks like having a metal card or having some kind of pointless discounts that i don't ever want to use and will never use.

So i don't it's not it's not really for people like me. I guess it's for some other audience. So that's why the revolut card is going as well now. The final decision was between monzo and starling, and that's probably the choice that most people are gon na.

Have if you're interested in a specific detailed guide as to what the key differences between those two are? What are the pros and cons of each one? I'm gon na put a link to the video up here. I'm gon na put a link to the video in description below, go and check it out. There's a separate video where i specifically compare these two and i provide all the details about where one might be better when the other might be better there's. Actually, you know a balance.

Some people probably would do far better with monzo and other people would probably prefer styling and go and watch that if you're interested, but in really really kind of basic terms. I am a much bigger fan of the way that styling is approaching. Building their bank account, because what i see them doing is they're addressing the real bottlenecks and the real issues that their customers are having and the things that their customers are asking for. So you will know that uh monzo are also releasing a bunch of new features, a bunch of new tools, they've released new products, they've released the monzo plus recently they released the monzo premium.

Just a few days ago, again, i've got a separate video where i covered that i'm going to put it at that description below as well, but the problem i see with those products is, i don't think, they're really addressing the actual issues and questions that their customers Have i don't believe that monza customers top priority is having a metal card? I don't believe that monzo customer's top priority is having an account where you have to pay in order to be able to deposit money into the bank. Account there's a bunch of other issues where i just think for a regular person using bank and regular way. There are fundamental things where monzo just loses out in such a big way and they're, not addressing those issues at all. If they're going to be spending 50 pounds per card to go and print these metal cards and try to sell them to people, if people like it, hey fair game uh, maybe maybe there are segments of the population who this really will work for, but the thing I like about starting, is they're addressing real issues.

You can deposit money for free really really easily in fact more easily than with any other bank account in the uk, because you can do that at the post office. That is a major win and that, as is actually useful for a lot of people, if you ever come to having cash, you can deposit a cheque for free very easily. You can do that on both when i tried the process, the starting process seemed to be faster. You can go and withdraw money again with styling.

The withdrawals are much better and styling is much better for using the card abroad in terms of the limits and the cost of doing so. For all these kind of everyday things, styling just seems to be winning all the time. They've recently released a bunch of extra features. You can now have accounts for your children.

You can do uh second and third accounts. If you want for a really small fee, which is really nice, because you can't open loads of multiple accounts with monzo for a feel without a fee um at the moment and most recently, they went and released another feature that a lot of their customers have been Asking for, in fact, a lot of monsters, customers have also been asking for it, which is a desktop access to their current account. Monzo, don't have it. You have to use the app and in situations where say you're transferring large amounts of money, and you want to be sure that you got the account and the account number right.

It is far far easier to be certain of that on a desktop than you know. Pasting with your finger and typing stuff on a mobile phone there's just no contest some people like to manage their finances on a desktop. They have apps or other websites linked to it. They just like going through their accounts and seeing all the transactions, and that is definitely far better done if you like doing it on a desktop, is far better than desktop.

So i'm pleased with the fact that stalin just seemed to be continuing to go and look down the list of issues that the customers have actual questions, that their customers are asking and just solving them actually addressing real problems. They don't have pointless gimmicks uh that some other banks, including monzo, are releasing they're not trying to sell you a premium account where the features within the premium account aren't really that premium. I actually don't have anything against premium accounts. I've previously had american express cards where i paid fees.

I've previously had other premium accounts. I don't have anything as a premium account if that premium account generally gives a lot more value than the sort of physical amount of money you have to hand over for that value. The problem i see with people who offer these premium accounts today is there isn't any value in them whatsoever unless, with this latest premium account, you really want that particular travel insurance and you want the mobile phone insurance and you want both of them. There is no value in there so, for example, if it's just for mobile phone insurance, it is well overpriced, even if it's just for the travel insurance, it's still overpriced and you can go and get it directly somewhere else sure for some people for some unique people Who want both of the main features on the premium account and some of the other small perks it will work, but that seems to be like a very specific sub-segment, especially in a situation where nobody can actually travel.

So the value of the travel insurance is pretty restrained. The last thing i wanted to cover is the traditional high street bank accounts. I have a few and some people noticed when i was doing the review when i was sending money to some of these accounts. I was doing it from my first direct account, and that is the account that i've been using the most out of the various high street banks, because i, like the one feature that i really care about, which is you can actually call them up and speak to A human being within a few seconds, rather than something more like an hour, which is the case with pretty much every other bank out there.

So i don't really care about whether they pay not point naught nothing percent or not point two times. Nothing percent, which is this seems to be the difference between the various different current accounts. There's no real perks to talk off on current accounts these days. So i actually think that customer service is pretty much the only big differentiator.

That's why i have and have been using first direct, but after some of the recent improvements of styling bank, i'm kind of beginning to see that there really isn't any genuine benefit to having a first direct account over having a starting account. It used to be the fact that you had branches, but now everything that starling does is basically replacing branches with equivalent very simple things. It's actually easier to go and post a check in the post and have it credited very quickly to your account then have to go and queue up at the branch and do it there. There's no issues that i can see where i would actually need to have access to those hivc branches, so that account i'm going to be closing down as well and i'm actually going to go and begin using starling, as my main account, because of well everything.

I've. Just said, i actually think it is fast becoming by far the best account in the uk, including all the old school banks, including challenger banks. I just think these guys are doing something really really right and i want to continue using it. For that reason, i want to see what else they're going to be coming out with just before somebody goes and makes a comment below.

I have no commercial affiliation with stalin bank whatsoever. I am not paid by them. I do not work for them. I do not consult them.

I i haven't spoken to them since i started this youtube channel, so i am doing this purely just based on my personal opinion, my personal reviews that are unbiased with every single other bank, not a single one of these. I actually have been paid for or had any commercial dealings with, i just went and applied and got them. So that's just my personal view. If you have a view on this, make sure you go and leave a comment below if you're interested in more reviews of personal finance products, i've got one more bank account review coming up next week, probably one that you might not have heard of.

But it's really interesting so make sure you go and subscribe to this channel and hit the bell. So you get notifications when that video comes out. Otherwise you might not see it and you miss it. If you like this video, please go and smash that, like button for youtube algorithm, i really really appreciate it.

It would help my channel grow and reach more people so that i can do more of this kind of content about personal finance products, about making more of the money that you have. Thank you so much for watching. I really really appreciate it. If you got this far, thank you so much i'll see you guys later.

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