My big review and comparison of UK Challenger Banks - Monese compared to Monzo, Starling, Revolut and Bunq - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m60CFWCEdo
In this video I do a complete review of Monese - everything you need to know, the complete journey from application to using the account and at the end of the video I give it the Sasha score.
1. Introduction - 00:00
2. Unboxing - 00:56
3. Application - 03:45
4. Using The App - 07:03
5. Pricing Options - 17:17
6. Spending on the card - 22:07
7. Sasha Score - 24:19
8. Conclusion - 37:35
The video came out pretty long and trust me - I cut out a whole lot more than I kept in!
Use the timestamps above and the chapters you can see in the video to skip to different sections depending on what you're interested in.
Monese is not quite a challenger bank, but it certainly likes to think itself as a direct competitor to Monzo, Starling and the rest so that's what I am comparing them to in this video.
Transactions, payments, features and everything about their app is put under a microscope - I highlight important things you may miss and many quirks that I have not seen anybody else highlight.
If you liked this video, please smash the like button!
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What's up you guys, sasha, here, a few weeks ago i applied for the monese monizy monies anyway, i wanted to have one just so i could see exactly what it actually does and doesn't do and how it compares to some of the other similar products in the Market, if you haven't seen already, i've got a whole separate video, where i would do a really interesting comparison of my knees with its biggest competitors. So i've got a review where i've got monzo's, starling revolut ammonies, all in one. It's a little bit different to my usual reviews because comparing multiple different products at the same time so after you've watched this video, make sure you go and check that one out i'll leave the description below and i'll also link it at the end of the video. Just to make it easy for you so anyway, here is the card.

I'm hoping there are some instructions inside of what i meant to do with it, because it's been quite a while: let's get it opened nice i have stickers yeah, i'm not sure what you do with these stickers. Do you put this on your car? Do you put this on your wall? I mean pretty big and round, or is this like for your laptop, i mean who knows stickers a letter saying monies, it says say hello to your new card, now activate your card all right, so i need the app. I think i actually have the app i haven't actually opened or used it now. Here's something i haven't seen before this is very, very old school marketing inside this brochure that you get there are these four little things these things tear away.

Look they tear away like this, you have a little strip of them and you can tear them off from each other and you can give them to your friends, and here is what they say. They say at my knees. We make it easy to receive your wages and send money to friends for free with contactless payments. Automated savings, cash top hubs and smart budgeting tools welcome to the feature of your finances.

So i guess the objective is that you put these in your wallet and you give them to all your friends so that they can go and get it as well. I mean, i can't remember the last time i've seen an actual marketing campaign that has little tearaway pieces of paper. This is something that happened like 25 years ago, when you would put an advert on a telegraph poll or something like that where people would tear off the number to dial. This is very old school interesting for those who are a bit more tech.

They do have social media, they have twitter, facebook and instagram. It doesn't tell you what they are. It just tells you a hashtag, my monies, but you know the icons are there, which makes it very, very cool, very, very tech. This glue is not good, so the card is pretty cool.

It's vertical design, which is in fashion now, there's a few different people doing this um, and i guess it's cool - i mean i don't know it doesn't really matter, and actually most people don't have their cards in their wallets vertically. Most people will have them horizontally like this, so when you're pulling it out of your wallet um, you get this thing showing first, i guess so you get the mastercard sign, showing when you're pulling out your wallet instead of the logo of the name of the company. I mean i have a wallet where you stack them vertically, but most people don't so so why i mean i guess it's cool, so your card number name and the valid are printed on the back and everything's kind of vertical in the back as well. Um yeah interesting, it says debit on it, um prepaid, i mean that's what it is.
It's a prepaid card. It's not a current account. It's not a credit card, so interesting. Let's go and open the app now, just before i get into the app when i applied for the card, i actually made some notes so that i can mention them in this review, because there's a few things that really really bothered me when i made the application Now the first of these is the way that you have to type in your address.

The system is very clumsy. It took me quite a while to actually go and input it longer than the equivalent things do for other people. It was quite frustrating quite annoying actually, and it was a little bit disconcerting now. I know this is not a bank account and that's kind of like the biggest thing with this card.

It's not a bank account, so your money is not protected. It's just a place. You can deposit some money so that then you can make payments, but it didn't ask for my date of birth. It didn't ask for my bank account details.

It asked for absolutely nothing to validate me in any way whatsoever, so it just makes you slightly concerned. What happens if some fraudster tries to access it? They literally have none of your personal information to try to protect you. If you're trying to speak to them, there's very limited stuff. They can i mean i don't get.

I don't know why, if you're setting this up, you wouldn't ask for information that would be quite standard in any sort of identity protection. But anyway, when you're setting the passcode on the app you have to set it as a five digit number, there's no options for other lengths or like a range from four to eight or some kind of other form of password. It's just five digits! That's what you have to do, it's pretty limiting um. I don't really know why you have to do it like that.

It seems pretty pointless. I guess it stops people from using the date of birth or some other day when their child was born or whatever it is as their passcode, but come on. I mean make it a little bit more flexible when i had to submit my driver's license as proof of identity. I had exactly the same problem as pretty much.

Every single other card and bank account that i've tried with all these challenger banks, which is they all use the same provider for taking the photo and then verifying it, and that provider's called on fido. And when i was doing it, i was trying to take the picture on my table. I was trying to take it in the air on the white background on a dark background, with a light off with the light on with, like literally closing the window, trying to keep the window open, so the daylight comes in none of it. It took me about five or six minutes.
I think, to get the thing to actually recognize the driving license. It was really really weird it was it kept telling me there's glare when there's no lights, he was telling me this two-minute glare. When there were lights, i mean maybe on fire, you should do something, or these guys should tell them. This is a pretty rubbish experience.

I've had much better experiences with old school banks doing something very similar. I don't really understand why this is better anyway. The last thing that really frustrated me with the application is this: when you open the app after you first applied, you have two options, you can say my card has arrived and we, and if you click that it then asks you to go and type in the Card details, so until the card has arrived, you can click. My card has not arrived and you can say: report card not arrived, confirm or cancel, and you can't do anything with the app until your card has actually arrived, which is really odd because pretty much every single other provider out there allows you to actually make some Payments set up there are debits, do some kind of other amount of stuff.

Before your cards arrive with this, you can't do anything and if you're getting one of them premium cards, you have to pay the monthly fee from the moment you're approved. So that's quite frustrating. I actually went and paid the fee just so i can test a few more features on this and because i, like the blue, color a lot more than the white color. So let's go ahead and activate the card, see how well this actually works boom.

We are in okay, so now i've got an account which has zero pounds. I can add money instant top up using a debit card. Free bank transfer free cash. How do you double cash post office or paypoint they're, both free and they're, free, because i'm paying the monthly fee question money from friends receive salary, free, okay? Well, let's put 20 pounds on the card, see how it works.

So it says it's free. I need to add a debit card, so there's no option to do the whole photo thing for the debit card. You have to manually type in the details, so i have type in the address and again there's just a lot of user issues. Here i have to go and scroll all the way down: they're going to select the united kingdom here we go, and then i have to manually type in the address.

There's absolutely no help whatsoever just like with the application. It's quite frustrating. This really should be a lot better. The transaction was declined.

Oh, i got a fraud notification from first direct, that's nice, so i bank, with first direct first direct, obviously don't like monies, because when i try to make the top up for 20 pounds, my first direct bank account blocked the transaction saying that they reckon it might Be fraud, so i had to go and confirm that it wasn't fraud to my bank, so let's go and try to top up again attempt number two. Oh it's gone through. I have 20 pounds. So when this card arrives, you don't actually get a separate letter which will tell you what your pin is.
The pin can be viewed from the app and what you do is you're going to type in the last three digits on the back of the card, and it will tell you where the pin is. You can't actually change it from from this. As far as i can see, it seems odd, i mean it seems like a very basic thing that you should be able to do but anyway, so if i lock the card bang, i have locked the card now and i can go and unlock it. Just the same, it's very quick and easy! Now, when i first applied, you could actually try to go and set up the virtual card before your real card arrived and before you leave a comment telling me that when you try to do that, it tells you that you can only do it if you're physically Present at your address now i was physically in my house when i was trying to do it.

I tried to walk around to different parts of the house, walk i just outside the front of my house, and it was telling me that i was about 200 meters away and therefore i could not access it. I was trying to use wi-fi and then turned off wi-fi and was using the masts regardless. Their app was telling me that i'm not actually at the property and therefore i couldn't activate it. So this is a massive oversight, they're using some very poor technology to try to determine if you're, at the address that you've put down, and if that crap technology determines that you are not at your address, there's nothing! You can do you can't use the card.

You have to wait until it arrives now to be fair, it did arrive reasonably quickly, not quite as quickly as styling on monzo, but i did apply on thursday somewhere around lunchtime and it turned up on the monday. So that's pretty quick. That's like three working days from when i applied, i mean that's pretty reasonable. I've just taken 10 minutes to go and look through the app go and check out the different features check out the features that i like check out what it does, what it doesn't do.

Trying to compare it to some of the other ones, and while i was doing that the monthly account fee has come out from the 20 pounds that i just deposited. So i put 20 pounds into the account and the moment the money was there they've gone, taking their five pound 95 for the privilege. That seems slightly off. I haven't done anything with the card.

I haven't made a single payment. I haven't actually done absolutely anything other than activate my card, and the moment i have another 595 has come out now. I do know it's my fault for not using the card and i do know it's my fault for waiting this amount of time, but essentially now i've paid two monthly fees without having done absolutely anything with the card um. That seems slightly off.
So if you say you take a little longer to activate your card or whatever they are going to go and take that money. The moment you deposit anything in that account now, let's go and cover the features and on the features. This thing is actually very, very thin. Now what i mean by that is, it tries to mimic some of the things that some of the other challenger banks and other bank accounts do, but not in a very good way.

So, for example, i can go and pay people and what i've done is i've gone and added my contacts and out of a very large contact book. I've got two people that i could potentially send money to when i was using the same feature on monzo. The list was pretty big, so there's quite a large number of people that i could have selected and if you want to pay somebody else, it's not very clear how you do because at the top you can click pay near by friends or send money globally. Your requests and standing orders and you have to click that thing at the bottom of the app, which is the new payment, and when you click that you then go through the steps.

Just like the same as with any other bank, you have to type in everything, manually, etc, and it takes quite a while. So i don't really see um a very good payment architecture in here and together with the low adoption, it really doesn't work very well. Now the second problem i have is they've borrowed two features clearly from monzo they've, even made them a look and feel and named them exactly the same thing. The first of these features is their savings parts.

Now, what they've done is you click savings? You can do two things you can set up pots exactly the same as monzo, so you can go and create a pot, and you can name it after whatever it is that you want save money for set a goal, make it five pounds yeah. My local pub is cheap, i'm going to create this pot and what i can then do is set up a recurring payment to send an amount of money. To this thing i can manually go and add and withdraw money from this. It's basically just dividing the money.

That's in your current account into separate groups, which i guess some people will like but seems not particularly useful or necessary. Really so i have these pots now and i can quit it, and i can also do savings and the savings looks somewhat similar to what monza do, except it's just completely outsourced they're, basically just getting a fee for referring you to somebody else, they're quite open about It so you can see that it's with this company called raisin and your savings are protected, but the problem is in order to open the account. You have to go and tick this box and go through to a separate website, and the rates are pretty poor and pretty low. There's not much to really be had here.
So, in order to set up this account, you have to go and create a whole new account with raisin. Then transfer money from your monies account to the raising account, but you get a signum bonus and it says that it's up to 100 pounds, someone had a look at the actual details. You have to look quite hard to find exactly where it says what you get so in order to qualify for a 10 pound bonus. You have to deposit between 5 000 and 909 pounds into one of these savings accounts to get the full 100.

You have to put in more than 75 000 pounds into your account. That's incredible! So they want you to part with 75 000 pounds of your money to get a 100 pound bonus and get much lower rates than you can get in many other places. This seems it seems like a really poor experience now, basically, just being an affiliate, the marketing use somebody else's services and, although monster does market other providers as well, the integration here is much worse and it just doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel anywhere near as good.

The second bit that i want to talk to you about other than savings is the loan, so they allow you to borrow money, and you think this would be the easy bit. This is where they make their money right, because licensing for lending is a lot easier than the banking license that they also don't have the truth. Is they don't have the lending license either? And if you go and try to borrow money, they tell you it's a quick application. No impact on your credit score, see your chance of approval.

There's some small font here and you can click get started, except unlike the savings bit, they are being incredibly unfair in not really telling you that the borrowing doesn't happen through monies. If you click read more, you can see what actually happens is they pass your details to a third party called monivo and that third party is basically just a comparison website and what that comparison website will do is they'll just process your details against a load of Different potential lenders and then show you the offers from those lenders now it says on this page quite clearly that your details are going to get sent to monivo. But if you look at the previous one it doesn't say any of that. It tells you absolutely nothing about sending you diesels to a third party.

It just tells you that monis finance limited is an appointed representative of some other random company name, which nobody will read because in the small font that doesn't seem right. If i hit get started, i then need to go and type in a bunch of details that i've already given to my knees, basically they're just again passing it to somebody else. If you do go and get a loan with that person, they get their kick back, which you know might be big. It might be small, i don't know, but this is.
This is very underhand they're, basically trying to force you to go and use this third-party service, and if you try to quit it after you've, found out that they're actually not doing the lending they're. Just passing you on to somebody else, they even pop up with a little message saying: do you want to leave the loan application and you have to click leave. I mean they're trying to stop you from leaving because they're so close to getting their cut. This seems underhand so basically, the two big features here are the savings, and the credit are both just passing you into somebody else, absolutely nothing to do with them.

They don't help you in any way to get those things they're just trying to get a little cut for passing you along. That's not great. That really is not great. What else does this thing do, so we just found out that you can't really save with them.

You can't borrow money, you can make payments from the card, you can add money to the account and that process is somewhat straightforward, although it's not as easy as it could be. There's no pre-sale options. You can't take a picture of the card, there's no way of making it a bit faster and easier like with some of the other providers. So one of the other options is invite friends, and my friends is just basically them trying to get you to do their marketing for them to try to attract more people.

You can get a statement, and this is pretty clunky. You have to like, go and select what you want pdf. Let's say i want pdf statement and then there's a it generates me something, but i think it could be slightly slicker without you having to generate it and export just tell me which statements i want and then how i want them exported without all these steps. In the middle, so basically anything you can do with this.

Is you can open an account that comes with a card? You can deposit money in it and then you can make payments out of it and if you want any of the premium features, then you're gon na have to pay extra. So, let's go very quickly through the different options you have when you're first making the application. There are three different cards you can get, you can get white, you can get blue and you can get dark, blue or simple classic and premium as they call them. There's actually no real difference between them.

The simple is free, the classic is five pounds 95 a month and the premium is 14 pounds 95 a month. They have exactly the same set of features except for two things where the pricing actually is different, and that is using your kind of broader we're drawing cash now for drawing cash. The simple card, which is the free one, allows you to withdraw up to 200 pounds. A month for free and you'll have to pay a two percent fee for any cash withdrawals, above that the middle one, the classic option, the one that i have will allow me to withdraw up to 900 pounds a month for free and i'll have to pay a Two percent fee, after that, the premium card that you're paying 15 pounds a month for allows you to withdraw unlimited amounts of cash per month from your account.
Now i don't know by you, i hardly ever withdraw cash, there's some specific reasons, sometimes why you need it, but unless you're some kind of drug dealer, what are you doing with drawing thousands of pounds of cash every single month? Because unless you're doing that, these things are just not worth it. In fact, if you have the free card, you can withdraw 200 pounds a month for free and then you can withdraw another 750 pounds at the 2 fee before you paying the 15 pounds that the premium card costs you every single month. So you have to withdraw. Quite a lot of money every single month in order for it to make any sense to get the premium account.

The other big difference is in using your card for purchases abroad. Now it works in exactly the same thing as the cash withdrawals, except for they've added. A zero to the end of all the numbers, so the basic, simple white card, the one that's free, you can use up to 2 000 pounds worth of foreign purchases a month for free. After that, you have to pay the 2 fee on top for the 595 classic card.

That number is 9 000 pounds a month and for the premium one there is no limit, so you can go and spend as much cash abroad as you like every single month. Now, given that most people, when they travel things like travel, car hire accommodation, all of those things are usually paid for in advance. You have to spend quite a large amount of money before you break the two thousand pound barrier and even then you're paying two percent. After that, which is not that much so, let's do a bit of math to try to figure out whether it's worth paying for the premium card.

If you're traveling and you're spending a lot of money, let's say you go on holiday twice a year, if you're having the basic account, you pay nothing for that account for the entire period. If you have the premium card, you're paying 15 pounds a month. So, over a six month period, you'll spend 90 pounds. So let's just do a bit of math.

So this means on each of your two holidays a year. You can withdraw four and a half thousand pounds plus the 2000. You get free. So that's six and a half thousand pounds before you break even on paying the monthly fee every single month.

For the privilege i mean, who is this premium card designed for now? One feature that moniz has that is similar to some of the other providers in particular. Is trying to compete with revolut is the ability to send money abroad and what that does is the simple, the white card, the one that's free that allows you to send money abroad, we're using a two percent fee for the privilege now to be fair, the exchange Rate on this is really really good. I've actually gotten checked and the exchange rate is what you can get with the best providers out there. That is the official exchange rate for the day.
It's great, but you haven't paid a two percent fee. If you have the basic card, if you have the middle of the road, the 595 card, you can go and do that for not point five percent exactly the same, but there is a two pound minimum fee. So that means that you have to go and transfer at least four hundred pounds before the fee goes above two pounds, so anything below that you're, actually paying considerably more. So if you're going to say, transfer 100 pounds you're still paying a 2 fee, in effect, so they're trying to stop people from sending low amounts or more likely just profiteer of people not being smart enough to understand how exactly that fee works for the premium account.

You can go and transfer whatever money you like for free, but again you would have to do a huge amount of this every single month before it becomes worthwhile. Now i wonder who this could be designed for perhaps it is for people who live in the uk or maybe another european country and their family and the people they want to send money to live in some other country, for example, in eastern europe. Maybe and they want to go and send money home every single month. Could that be the case? Well, we don't know, but but something tells me that is exactly what they're going for.

I don't know what it is, but something is telling me that that might be what they're trying to do. The card is very easy to set up with both android pay and apple pay. You go through the app you have to click a few things and you're in it takes very little time, it's relatively straightforward, so that works just as it should. So.

I wanted to go and try to make a purchase with the money that was left in the account after the fee came out. So i went and made a purchase online and i decided to buy a record on amazon now when i went to actually make the purchase and enter my payment details. What i did ask is it gave me the option, just like many of the best retailers out there of instead having to type in the entire number. I could take a picture of the card.

The only problem is that all of these take a horizontal picture and no matter what i did. It wouldn't register the numbers on the back of the card because they are printed in a different way in a much smaller font and they're printed vertically. Now i tried doing it as a vertical snapshot. Again, you just wouldn't recognize the numbers.

I wouldn't recognize that as a card, so i had to go and type in the whole thing manually, which i i guess, it's cool that it's vertical, but is it actually useful? Does it actually make it worse for the fact that, with all the different online payment systems, which use regular credit cards where things are printed horizontally, you can't actually use one of these there's a few other options that you can see if you click through on the Menu on the left hand, side of the app you can go and scroll around and there's other options like you can add your paypal account. You can also add your avios and what that means is you can go and look at things like your avios, like transactions and things within the app, and it will tell you some places where you can buy stuff and get avios in return. But it's nothing to do with the monies app monies app itself doesn't give you avios. It doesn't make sure that you can get avios in places where you otherwise couldn't it just it's just a way of integrating something where there's literally no benefit.
There's no point to it: you're just linking two completely unrelated accounts, so you can view one from the other. But there's just no point. The two are completely separate. I don't really get it.

I don't get why you would want to ever. Do that. I mean, like they're extra features, i guess but features that give you absolutely nothing in return that don't improve your life in any way whatsoever. You can just waste like five minutes of your time, linking the two accounts, but if you want to use your avios, you still have to go back to the audio side.

If you want to look at how much different flights are, you still have to go back. Yeah, like this, doesn't give you anything now: we've got to the best bit, which is the bit where we actually get to go and give it the money fox score. So, first, let's talk about the application. Now there are three things that we score: every time that we look at the application there, the application, speed simplicity and the onboarding process now for speed.

I have given this thing a six out of ten and the reason is it was okay, but there was a few things where it's just objectively slower than the other challenger banks and certainly some other regular application processors out there. So the address system was poor. You couldn't just type in the postcode saying get the full address. There wasn't some automated system which could use the apps functionality to be able to determine where it literally was really poor.

The automated thing that tried to guess where it was was horrific. It didn't even guess the right street and there was no way of changing it or moving it around or anything like that for the simplicity of giving it an eight. Now it is incredibly simple and actually doesn't ask questions that, like a proper bank with a proper banking license, would ask which makes it simple, but the things that i mentioned earlier in terms of simplicity, let it down. So the fact that i had to type in the entire address - again - that's not very simple, so i didn't like the fact that those things fell apart the moment i tried to use them for onboarding, i gave it a 4 out of 10.

now this sounds extremely Harsh but let's talk about the onboarding process so once i actually applied, i then had to wait three working days and actually you know a full five days before the card arrived, which is a lot longer than the other leading players so sterling and monzo will do It the next day and other people generally do it quite quick. Even some of the more traditional banks will probably not take a full three days for the car to arrive in the time before the car arrived. There was nothing i could do with the account. So the app would completely block me out.
There was nothing i could do when i went and logged in online on the computer. I could go and access the bit, which would potentially open up my virtual card, but because the app and the phone kept thinking that i was not in the location that was actually in, i couldn't do that either. So there's nothing you can do for that period of time. You've paid the fee, but for the five days before your card arrives, there's nothing you can do and then you have to go and authorize the card and do all that.

That's the first time when you can actually begin using it. The onboarding process is pretty poor. That's why it scores a four and that gives it a total of just 18 out of 30 for the application process. Now, let's talk about using the card in terms of just making regular payments for things that you buy making transactions, it is very easy.

There is no problem whatsoever with that. The transactions didn't fail. It didn't have to go through any kind of fraud stuff. So i'll give it a solid nine out of ten.

For that i mean why not attend there's a few things that just let it down, for example, the fact that i couldn't go and scan it when i was making the amazon purchase - and i know that's slightly different part of the review, but those types of things Really do make an impact, the fact that i couldn't use it for the first few days after application again quite frustrating if you're wanting to use the card immediately after you applied. So that's probably why it didn't get to the full 10.. Now, let's talk about actually paying money into the account now the online systems are pretty good, so the online systems for either making payments with your debit card or doing a transfer work pretty well they're very fast. So i'm kind of happy with that problems arise when you're talking about some of the other types of payments that you might want to make.

So if you have to deposit cash, let's say you got given some cash as a christmas present by your auntie or whatever it is. You just happen to come across some cash, and you want to put it into your account. Your two options are to find a pay point location or to go to the post office. You have to pay steep fees in order to be able to do that, which i don't fundamentally agree with.

You're depositing money into the system and they're charging you fees for the privilege that doesn't feel right now. I know that they're an online entity, they don't have branches or cash machines or other types of things like that. But that's not your problem as a consumer. That's a bad experience now last is checks and they fundamentally don't accept checks at all.
There is no way that you can deposit checks. You can't take a photo like with some of the other people. You can't use somebody else's branches like with some other people. You can't go and use the post office or anything like you.

Just can't deposit checks and the problem with this is, if they're trying to become the platform of choice for people to put their salary in to use as their main account to close other accounts and to use this as their effective current account. You can't do that. What if you get a tax rebate from the hmrc sent to you by cheque? There are situations in life even today where sometimes you might get a check, maybe once a year you'll have to go in cash and check, and if that's your only account, you cannot cash, it there's nothing. You can do with it.

You have to go and find a different account and put it in that instead now, for that reason for the cash reason as well, i'm gon na give it a six out of ten. Maybe it's generous, maybe it's harsh, i don't know. I think it's a 6 out of 10 for that for the app and online account i've, given it a 6 out of 10. now it would have been a bit lower because, although the app looks relatively pretty there's a lot of different features, most of the options That you see within the account, are trying to sell you something they're either trying to sell you a loan by somebody else, they're trying to sell you a savings platform by somebody else, they're trying to link pointless things like paypal and avios, which are completely pointless.

So it's pretty, but it's not very functional. It doesn't really add to the experience or enhance the features of the current account in any particular way, and some things are really buried. So, if you're looking for help or if you're looking for other things within the app they're quite difficult to find, you have to go and click through to the questions section and then pick a topic and then scroll right to the bottom. And only then can you go and select the help, and then you can pick a chat or an email option or whatever it is.

I didn't like that. I don't like that within the design they're trying to hide things that are fundamentally useful and important to people, because they don't want to spend money on having people answer those queries now. The fact that there is a website you can log into is great some other app. Only or online banks choose to not do the website part at all, which really frustrates me.

I don't really get why you wouldn't do it for the people who prefer to use a website for whatever reason - and you know if you want to get a statement if you want to be able to download transactions, a computer is a much better way of doing That than doing it on your phone, but anyway, that's why we're not going below that's? Why we're sticking to a six out of ten for that, it's all together for using the card making payments transactions. All of that kind of stuff monies gets a solid 21 out of 30.. Now, let's come to the last bit. This section has a maximum of 40 points.
We're going to talk about the experience with the card customer support the kind of features that it has versus just what you would expect versus its competitors. Let's dive right in and talk about, the customer support the customer service bit to start with it is horrific. It is appalling number one. It is hidden um, it is hidden other providers as well so like with the monzo, for example, you have to go and click through to go and try to find it, but here it is hidden a little bit further.

You have to first find where the actual help bid is it's not very straightforward, once you've done that, you then have to pick a section if, at that point you're trying to find where the chat or whatever option is it's not there, and only then, as i Mentioned can you actually go and find the support options? Now you have three support options and the three support options are chat, email or phone. Now, let's talk about the phone option. First, they don't actually print the phone number anywhere. You have to click on the button and only then will they tell you what the number is and you can dial it.

But if you're looking at this option out of hours, they just grayed out and you can't even find the number. So let's say you want to make that phone call the next day you can't just go and write this number down. You have to go back into the app the next morning. You have to follow the whole journey, then go and click on the thing, and only then will you be able to actually ring the number there's no option for them to ring you or anything like that that some of the other providers do give you.

So this is quite annoying. This is quite frustrating. I think it's unnecessary. You can just print the number under that with the hours that it's open, you don't have to make it that much more difficult for people on the chat and the email.

It kind of sounds great. It says we will get back to you as soon as possible. We will answer any question you might have within a few minutes, maybe a few hours whatever it is, but i went and tried it out. Let's get the phone, so i went on the app and i sent them a chat message and the chat message i sent them said this: what is the exchange rate that you use when i pay in foreign currency? Is it a mastercard one? Do you add anything on top? This should be a very straightforward answer from a customer service representative, but then they first asked me which language did.

I want to converse in and there's 13 options. I chose english now in answer to this question. I got an automated robot, which said hi. I am moniz, automated support happy to assist you smiley face.
How may i help you today and they say please know that as an extra layer of security, all cards need to be verified by mastercard 3d secure program all verified by visa. In case of visa cards, i mean they should probably know which one i have because they've like given it to me, but anyway, then there's a whole bunch of stuff. That is completely nothing to do with the question i asked it says: was this helpful one? Yes, two, no, i said no, so then they said great. Your issue has been forwarded to our support team.

Our chat support working hours at 8am to 5pm monday to friday and 10am to 4pm on a saturday. Your issue will be looked into as soon as possible. Now this is a question that should have like a 10 second answer from somebody who knows what they're doing or maybe it'll take them a whole 30 seconds to go and look it up first and then type out the answer. But i asked this question almost 24 hours ago on a weekday and i still haven't got absolutely anything back.

I mean if you had a more serious question or a more pressing issue with your card. Is this how long they're gon na respond to everything three out of ten for support and that's probably being generous product features i've given it a 94 out of 10.? Now they might strongly disagree with this. They might say we have all these different features in our account, but i would argue, none of them are features. The only features of the account genuinely has are this: you can open an account which sends you a card, you can deposit money into this card and you know those features are nice.

They work quite well. You can make payments using the money they've just deposited, but you just deposited money from a current account, because that's pretty much the only way that you can do it, which probably has a debit card, so you could have done all of that using your current account. Anyway, i don't really see how you're making anything better by moving it to a different account with a different color card and using that card instead. Now the only feature that this account offers other than these ones is the ability to split your money into some kind of pots.

So you can go name these parts into different things. I mean if that works, for you, fine, i'm happy with that. It's similar to monzo, it's not actually quite as functional or efficient or well thought out as monzo, but it's loosely modeled on it. The savings thing is not a feature because you're trying to sell somebody else's saving products.

The lending thing is not a feature because you're trying to sell somebody else's lending just push the customer out you're, not even making an attempt to make it easy. There's no integration, you don't do it through your own app, i wouldn't mind if somebody else was doing the underwriting as long as you made the journey, seamless and straightforward, but no you just hey hit this button. Go over there do everything away from us and we'll get paid if they decide to lend to you, i mean that seems extremely lazy on design i've, given it a 6 out of 10. now that might be slightly generous, but i've already scored it down.
For some of the features that are sort of design related in other parts, so i thought it wouldn't be too harsh i mean the card looks nice, it's very pretty. The plastic is good, is better than some of the other stuff that i've seen. But it's pointless now the vertical card is nice, but doesn't make any sense to have the design being vertical if it actually actively limits the functionality of the card and prevents you from doing basic stuff like being able to take a photo when you're making payments, which Is becoming quite a commonplace thing when buying things online when you're looking at the app and the website, they look. Alright, they look relatively pleasing to the eye, but functionally they're.

Just not that well thought out they're trying to hide things which i don't like personally and that's why the design score is just a six out of ten. Now, let's talk about how the card and the product compares to some of this competition - and this is a bit different because you're trying to assess what is this trying to win against we're talking about the revolutes? We're talking about the monzo's we're talking about the starting banks now, although the feature set, i've already scored not very well when you compare it to current accounts and general banks, because that's ultimately the sphere in which this product exists. When you look at the competition that is directly competing against asia and some of the frustrations that i had with this card, so they share issues with being able to pay cash and checks in they share some of the issues with limiting the support available and making It difficult to access it. I don't like some of the other features that i didn't like with this card with some of the others like, for example, the pots, and all of that i get that they're.

Nice sounding it's a good idea in theory, but i just think it's a very clumsy implementation. You have to do so much typing and moving money around and setting them up and managing them on ongoing basis. I don't actually think it makes life easier. I think, if anything, it makes it a bit more complicated, so i get the trying to copy monzo in doing it, but i don't really see a big advantage now, although the feature set overall is not great because of those limitations by the other banks.

I've, given it a 5 out of 10., so after all that the experience score adds up to an 18 out of 40., and that means that the total money fox score for the monies card is 57 out of 100.. When you think about the fact that monzo scored 74 there's a lot of ground to be made up still when i was talking about the features and some of the way that it compares against the competition, i didn't expressly mention it, because i'd be talking about it. Every single time, but the fact that they're, not a bank, the fact that they don't have a banking license the fact that your money is not protected. Those things are quite important and the fact that they don't have them has played down some of these scores.
And it's probably partially responsible for why the overall score is so low. If you guys found this useful, please make sure you subscribe to this channel. I've got a bunch of other reviews coming out. I have loads of other videos all about personal finance.

All about the way you can borrow money. Invest money manage your money, all that kind of stuff if you're interested in those types of videos that come out every monday, wednesday and friday on my channel every now and then i'm gon na have a big documentary star video coming out in my on the money Series so look out for them. I've got a couple in production at the moment that take quite a long time to actually piece together a lot more work than these regular videos that you are seeing now. If you like this video, i would really really appreciate it.

If you could just hit that like button, just smash it, if you haven't done so already, please please make sure you go and hit it right now. It is amazing for the youtube algorithm for a small young channel like mine. It gets this video showing to more people the more times you hit that like button, the more this video gets trained to other people and the more people can go and find out exactly how good or bad products are and exactly what they should do with their Money. Thank you very much for watching i'll, see you guys later.

You.

By Stock Chat

where the coffee is hot and so is the chat

25 thoughts on “Monese review 2020 – how does it compare to other challenger banks?”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Direct Janitorial Solutions says:

    Monese have closed my account and have held my money and not returned it. Not answering the phone, email, chat and been removed from the app

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars amrit amrit says:

    Its almost 6 weeks..they don't open account and my money still there ..I m crying

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Maryia Toll says:

    BEWARE people! Dont ever think about using monese! it's a massive scam, they blocked account of my husband right after he got his salary paid, without any justification and possibility to object. They just steal all your money whenever they want!

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Grow With Me TV says:

    If I pay for my monese card every month will it boost my credit ?

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Anita Ferreira says:

    bad experience with this bank. Service only by e-mail and that never responds. lousy bench.

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Audrius Kubilius says:

    MOnese is a scamer bank, blockacaunts, suports not working i got to get 2k in my acaunt …. and they don't return them 2 months now….

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Jason Winter says:

    Wow I recommend *CRACK4ORD_ ON !NSTAGRAM my account was fixed through he's support*

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars VIP SOLUTION says:

    Sasha put more advert advising people about the situation, is sad to see this company taking advantage of hard working people because they dont speak english. Is not only me trying to make Monese clients i can give you few people details and you can contact them direct to get not only information but proof what t people is facing.

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars VIP SOLUTION says:

    is sad to see this company taking advantage of hard working people because they dont speak english. Is not only me trying to make Monese lose clients i can give you few people details and you can contact them direct to get not only information but proof what t people is facing.

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars K24 says:

    Thieves that close your bank account and block you on social media when you challenge them about the scam they are running.

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars volter says:

    they blocked thousands account recently, few of my friends(including me) lost lot of money for no reason…
    stay away from them for now…

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Logan Lodge says:

    Please avoid avoid Monese biggest thieves!!! Really investigate what they do to loyal customers.

  13. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Sharon Beth says:

    It is a risk to go with this bank ,dont do it .I lost money and there is no customer care when you have any issues. Just call them and ckeck.

  14. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Rely Rely says:

    Very bad experience with them. They bloc my account with my money inside. There is no respond from them. No phone call no chat no nothing . I totally don't recommend

  15. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Bicimoto World says:

    They are scammers, you can never be sure about any payment because they block almost every transaction "for security reasons"

  16. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars MERCIFUL I LOVE KIDS says:

    They don’t respond to you when you need help like when you have some trouble if you call they will not pick ur call and when you send email 📧 they will not reply for week to bad somebody used my card I need them to cancel the payment but they didn’t help so bad

  17. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Kazimierz Wiśniowski says:

    Monese blocked my account and robbed me for £ 2,300. The case is reported to the police

  18. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Debbie's Corner says:

    I have opened an account from Monese a few days ago, is it safe for deposit salary ?
    I actually intend to open an account from Rovlut, but not successful, because I am from Australia, I am renewing my Italy residence permit card, I can't proof to Rovlut I have the right to stay in Italy.
    Besides N26, can anyone recommend another reliable online bank ? thanks in advance

  19. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Debbie's Corner says:

    I heard that Monese would shut down customer accounts without notification at all….

  20. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars faruk ahmed says:

    I've just open an account in both monese and monzo, bt it is still showing "processing" bar. It has been almost 2 days. Is it normal,?

  21. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Tanya Che says:

    Worst bank ever. They blocked my card , cause I am out of EU zone. They asked to provide an alternative bank account to refund money, I wrote. And after one month no money, nobody answer emails, nobody answer on phone calls. I am desperate.

  22. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars SAFFI ULLAH says:

    You deserve so many more views! I’m shocked. Learnt so much from your videos

  23. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Michael Gibson says:

    Really in depth and informative. Enjoyed that you got into the nitty gritty. I think the real challenge for them is they are not a registered UK bank, and as such are in the majority of situations, going to be playing catch up. Looking forward to the next video.

  24. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen says:

    A few things to consider:
    1-Monese was already up and running 4 years ago when Monzo was in beta.
    2-It was marketed as an always free bank account (I don't remember the exact wording, but it was implied that they would not charge money for it), except they started charging about £60 year.
    3-They must have lost lots of users as a result and – at a certain point – they backpedaled on the decision and introduced the 3 tiers we have today.

    Said that, what is the purpose of Monese? It's thought for someone moving to the UK (and was marketed as such as well): anyone can open a Monese account when still abroad, receive the card, load money onto it and then use the pound balance to spend money when arriving in the UK, and pay the deposit for the flat/shared accommodation out of it when needed.

    And no, Revolut is not an equivalent options, since Monese actually answers emails should you need to contact them.

  25. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Sasha Yanshin says:

    Howdy! I've decided to update the channel to just use my name – it is just me talking in every single video after all! Hope you guys enjoy the review!

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