What's up you guys, sasha here, monzo is the most popular challenger bank in the uk, the hot coral card that they issue has managed to attract almost five million customers in the relatively short space of time that they've been around, and the card is particularly popular with The younger crowd the whole focus on travel and being completely free to use abroad, plus the app first interface is incredibly popular. Now i made a video where i reviewed this card in early 2019, but that was one of my very first videos and a huge amount has changed since then. So i thought it's really appropriate to go and do an update, go and tell you exactly what i think about monzo at the moment. Talk you through all the pros and all the really strong points, some of them very unique to the bonzo card and the app and others where i think they really could do with improving their product and maybe ones where they're a bit behind their competition.

Just so, you can understand exactly where they currently stand and what my personal opinion about it is so that you can go and form your own based on the information provided and decide whether you want to go and try them out or if you want to go And use something else: instead, just a super brief disclaimer, i am not a financial advisor. I can't provide financial advice to you and if you do want financial advice, make sure you go and seek it elsewhere now without further ado, let's jump into the video now. Let me put the card aside and tell you about some of the perks and some of the overall things about this card, an app that i think are really useful to understand. Now, first of all, as you might expect, with a very popular challenger bank, it is completely free to apply and a completely free product to use um.

It has absolutely no requirements for having a minimum amount of money that turns up every single month or sending up direct debits or anything else like that. It is completely free to go and set up. So if you do want to try it out, there is no monetary cost. Unless you opt for one of the premium accounts, i'm going to get to that a little bit later.

It still offers some of the perks that initially attracted a bunch of customers to it. So one of the main ones is the free to use abroad. So if you use your monzo card to purchase things abroad, there is absolutely no cost. The rates that are being used are the official on the day, exchange rates with absolutely no load or extra fees.

On top from monzo, there are no fees involved or anything like that, which is incredible, although when the card first launched, they also allowed you to go and withdraw cash abroad without lots of fees, that's definitely changed. There's definitely restrictions on that and i'm going to cover them a little bit later in this video as well. A couple other major benefits are the app is incredibly simple, incredibly nice to look at and super easy to use. I would probably say it's the best app out there in terms of simplicity and in terms of incorporating the vast number of features in a relatively seamless menu.

This is something that's very difficult to do with the banking app, because, once your banking app grows to offer loads and loads of different kinds of features, it's difficult to understand how to actually structure them within different parts of the app so that they're intuitive easy to Find and easy to use, but without having menus, which are nested within menus and things that are very difficult to find. This is something that traditional banks have really struggled with, but even styling have struggled with, because their menu navigation is considerably less obvious and there's lots of different parts of the menu in different places. Monzo have done really well on that. They also offer another really popular feature that allows you to split bills.

So whenever you go and pay for something say a meal where there's a number of different people or a purchase that is going to be shared between more than one person, you can go and ask for money to be contributed by those other people. In a really simple and very very easy way - and you can do that - whether they are a monzo customer or not, which is extra useful and a really nice touch as well. Also, i really like the fact that some of the information that is really critical to understanding how to use your account, such as the various different limits on the amounts that you can send the amount you can withdraw. The various costs and fees involved are very easily accessible and very nicely laid out.

This is certainly something that is nowhere near as easy to find with other banking apps. The last great feature that monzo really are leading on and that a lot of other people have tried to copy, but not very successfully, or at least not as successfully is the breakdown of your spending. So when you go and look at the app, you can go and see exactly what you've been spending. What you've been spending it on and the breakdown via different, very nice, to look at wheels, which tell you what proportion you're spending on different types of things and - and that is incredibly useful.

A lot of people find this feature. One of the main reasons to have monzo and one of the main reasons why they haven't switched from monzo to styling, for example, standing have recently released something very very similar. You might have to manually opt in through the app in order to see these new screens because they are not part of the app by default. But even this new feature set that they're, releasing, i feel, is not quite as simple and quite as intuitive as the stuff that monzo have been working on.

So that is another massive plus for monzo. If you like, looking your transactions and trying to understand exactly where your money is going every single month to better manage your money now, let me really quickly cover something that is quite new for monsoo and that is their paid account options. They've recently introduced two new paid options on top of their standard account, which is completely free and they are the monzo plus account and the monzo premium account. The monzo plus costs five pounds per month - that's 60 pounds per year and there's a three month minimum term.

Now, for that, you get a bunch of, in my humble opinion, relatively pointless perks like the ability to go and generate a custom card design or the ability to go and get up to one percent savings on balances of up to 2 000 pounds per year, which Is equivalent to the value of 20 pounds for a product that costs 60 pounds a year to have monster premium costs a whopping 15 pounds a month and there's a minimum six month term, and for that you get even more perks. You get a metal card. You get various kinds of travel, insurance and other insurance products, and you get the ability to withdraw, wait for it 600 pounds abroad without having to pay any fees. Now, given that this is a super premium, account we're talking 180 pounds a year, we're talking the sort of money that you would expect to pay for a super premium, very high-end credit card that packs ridiculous amounts of features into their product.

I would kind of have hope that perhaps on this type of product, that limit would be either waived altogether or maybe raised to some really high number for people who want to use it, and i kind of feel that, in my opinion, launching a metal card that Offers huge amounts of travel perks like travel, insurance and lounge access, and things like that in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, where nobody is able to go and travel anywhere is a little. I'm not sure what the word is. You decide and tell me in the comments below now. I have reviewed both monzo plus and monster premium separately in individual videos and, if you're interested in in-depth reviews about those make sure you go and check them in the description below i'm going to leave the links down there.

Next, let's talk about the main feature of the monzo account that attracts huge amounts of people, and that probably is the main reason why people like using monzo and the main reason why they have almost five million customers, or perhaps they already have five million customers. As i'm recording this, and that is their pots feature, so what are these parts now? They are an incredibly useful way to go and assign money that you want to go and spend for particular purposes into a separate mini account. This is outside your current account. What you can then do is essentially go and move money into it, either manually or automatically, which i'm going to get to in just a second, which is, i think, the best part of this whole thing and then assign transactions to automatically come out of that or Move transactions.

What happened to come out of that pot? That is an incredibly incredibly useful feature. So, for example, when you get your salary paid into your account, you can use this feature called the salary sorter to automatically go and split off some parts of that salary. To go into these various pots, and you can, for example, go and set up a pot to pay for your utility bills for water for internet, for whatever it is that you want into one pot. You can then have a second pot for things like council tax.

Perhaps and some other things and a third pot for rent mortgage payments and anything else you like, and the amount of money that fits into each of these pots, is determined by you, you can decide to move as much or as little as you like, and then You can make the transactions so the direct debits, for example, to your utility companies or to your mortgage provider to automatically take money from these parts. What this means is that money is then ring fenced, and you can then go and do whatever you like with the remaining money, and you will know exactly how much money you have left for the month, but even better than that. They even then go and tell you, based on their projections, for how much different direct debits are going to take out of your account and when your next salary payment is going to be, they will tell you how much money you have left to spend in the Account by using all those calculations, so the combination of all of these features allows people to manage their money incredibly well, and this is certainly unique in the industry. There isn't a single other account that comes even close to providing something similar to this.

Some do part of what i've just described. Some offer pots like, for example, styling, do something similar, but you can't actually attribute transactions to them yet and they're nowhere near as intuitive or simple to use. Others give you the how much money you have left to spend for that month, but without properly accounting for the distribution of money into the various direct debits. I'm not going to get into the depths of that.

They are the one bank that gives you that whole package in this way, that is this easy to use. So if that kind of thing appeals, i think you'll really like what monzo have to offer. They also add a few really nice touches to these parts. For example, you can go and assign custom names to all of these spots.

You can go and assign custom photos to be the little logo for each of these pots, and you can also go and smash the like button for youtube algorithm. If you think that this is useful - and you think this is interesting and you would like more people to be able to watch this video to make their own mind up as to what they think about monzo, so if you haven't done so already make sure you Go and set up a pot for likes for this video and distribute at least one like into it, so that that thumb down there turns blue. Thank you very much. Now confusingly monzo also have a second feature.

That is also called pots. They're called saving spots, but it is a completely different feature that has absolutely nothing to do with the one that i just mentioned. I kind of feel that probably could do with changing that name to something that isn't as easy to mistake. What it really is is a bunch of savings accounts and the savings accounts are not even provided by monzo themselves, they're just provided by third parties and, in essence, monzo is just offering them so that they can get a small commission.

In order for referring you to those savings providers - and i feel that it is somewhat disingenuous to showcase this as some kind of feature or some kind of really big part of monzo, because it's just a an affiliate gig, where they're selling you to some third parties To products that are hugely uncompetitive, their easy access saver offers 9.15 interest per year and their fixed term savers go up to a maximum 0.45. Both of those really uncompetitive. You can get much much better rates at a huge number of different places. As i am filming this, and the same has been before when the rates were a bit higher as well, so i kind of feel like this isn't really so much as a feature as just a way of making a bit of money on the side for monzo.

Without really providing anything particularly valuable to their user base, because the savings products that they're offering are somewhat uncompetitive when it comes to lending monzo again, don't offer anything particularly groundbreaking. They currently have two products, they have overdrafts and they have loans. The overdraft product offers three different rates: they offer 19 29 and 39 and before they had a very limited roll out of this, it appears that they're loosening this to some degree. So more people can go and get access to these products.

I wasn't able to qualify previously, but after answering a small number of questions, i was accepted and i managed to get the 19 rate but really important thing. The representative rate on overdraft is 39, and that means that more than half of everyone applying for the overdraft will get the 39, which is a very expensive way to borrow. It is one of the most expensive ways that you can borrow, even if your credit is not perfect, but having said that, it is no worse than what most of the other high street challenge banks are offering. In fact, it is pretty much exactly the same.

Almost all of them are offering around about 40 percent on their overdraft rates. It is because the fca forced them to change the way that they price overdrafts um through some legislation over the last couple years, but anyway, i'm not going to go into the depths of that. If you really do want to have that safety net in case, you really have to go down there or in case one transaction, goes and takes you over, and you don't want that transaction to be declined. You are able to go and access these overdrafts, although expect them to be somewhat expensive.

One really important point is when you are going to apply for one of these overdrafts, they will show you an interest rate which is going to be lower than this aer rate. That they show you because they legally have to that doesn't mean your interest - is actually lower. If you compare this rate to other things like loans or credit cards, you have to compare the aer, because the rate that they're showing you, which is the interest rate, is actually the simple interest rates, not the compound one and everyone else shows the compound. So i think it's slightly disingenuous, just ignore it when you go and see it through the various screens that it takes to go and apply use the aer.

If you want to compare the price of their overdraft to other lending products, now they also offer loans and loans are still somewhat restricted in that, for example, i have absolutely no loan option available to me, even though i am relatively low risk, even they themselves tell Me that i'm relatively low risk by giving me the lowest possible rate on my overdraft. But i believe that only people who use monzo as their primary account actually qualify for loans at the moment and they kind of allude to in the text of why you are not eligible to something saying pretty much that very thing. If you're paying your salary, if you have their debits set up and they can understand more about your financial position at the point of application, maybe you'll be able to qualify for loans more easily. But even if you do their loans are incredibly expensive again they have a representative apr of 26.6.

That means more than 51 percent of everyone who applies for that. Loan will get an api of 26.6 or higher so expect your loan to be really quite expensive, and if you have a reasonably low risk level or if you have an average or decent credit, you are most likely going to be able to get better rates. For your loan elsewhere so make sure you shop around another thing. They recently changed the amount that you can go and borrow on these loans.

They used to offer normal loan sizes where there was different pricing above seven and a half thousand and below seven and a half thousand that are referenced in the original review. That has all changed. The maximum you can borrow through alone at the moment is just 3 000 pounds, so, given that i think for most people, there's probably going to be better options elsewhere now, let me cover some critical things about the monster card and the regular usage of it for Anyone considering using monzo as their main bank account for anyone wanting to find out what are the different things that i need to look out for and things that perhaps months of themselves, won't tell you before you reply, or perhaps some of the other reviews. Don't really focus on first, let me talk about cash withdrawals now, although some people will say hey, that's not really particularly important.

There may be that one time when you do need to go and get cash, and if monso is your only bank account, it will cost. You so, let's say you're buying something on gumtree or, let's say you're buying a used car from somebody in the seller prefers to exchange cash rather than bank accounts, because they are not very confident or whatever other reason. There's a myriad of reasons. Why? Maybe you do need to go and withdraw more than the 250 pounds worth of cash that you're allowed to withdraw every single month.

Now, what monte do is within the uk and the eu? They set a limit of 250 pounds and if you would draw more than that, you will have to pay three percent as a fee for the amount you withdraw, which is really quite expensive. It is the same as if you were joining this on a credit card. It is far more than it actually cost them to process those transactions. Now outside the eu, you can withdraw 200 pounds without paying the fee and then paid the same three percent fee, which is actually reasonable, and i think that bit is fine.

I just feel within the uk they really could do a little bit better than they are doing now. The next one i'm going to talk about is depositing money into your account, and this is the bit where monzo really could do somewhat better. Now there are two ways you can go and deposit money into your account other than transferring it from another account and that is via cash or via checks on both of those monsters. Don't do very well, first of all, with cash.

The only way you can do it is by processing a payment through a paypoint location. There are 28 000 of them around the uk in all kinds of corner shops and small, various random stores in small villages and towns. You can go and find one pretty much anywhere very easily, but it will cost you money. You will go, have to go and find this place.

You have to go and queue up then go to the counter and deposit the money and it'll cost you one pound per transaction which doesn't sound too bad. But if you're only depositing, say 10 pounds or 20 pounds, because your grandma happened to give it to you. As a christmas present, that's going to be quite expensive as a proportionate charge or you're going to have to keep the cash and then spend that cash whenever you're buying things, but that is not very practical. It isn't very safe.

Most people wouldn't recommend it, but monzo's own limits may force you to do exactly that because they limit you to a maximum of 300 pounds per transaction when you deposit in cash and only a thousand pounds per every six months - and here is the problem - if you, Let's say you sold a car and you got paid a load of money for it or let's say you did a car, boot sale and sold a lot of stuff, and i have a couple thousand pounds that you want to deposit or you just got paid you're A self-employed person and somebody paid you in cash for whatever reason in any of those circumstances, you can't go and deposit that money into monzo. You just can't do it, they won't take it and their reasoning is it prevents money laundering now, although that is true, other banks do allow you to do it with some extra checks. In some cases, we're starting. You can deposit up to 20 000 pounds per transaction with high street banks.

If you can go and prove the source in some cases you may be able to deposit pretty much unlimited amounts of money and even without having to do that, there's still reasonably high limits. So the reason they're not doing it is just to go and protect themselves and makes it highly impractical for some people in some situations. Now, when it comes to checks, they do something similar to what styling do, which is somewhat easy, which is you get an envelope and you write free post monzo and then you go and stick your check inside that send it off and when i first did the Review some time ago, they said that it would take up to three weeks to process that has since come down to just two weeks, which still is not great. If you really want to access that money and you need it in your account as quickly as possible.

With pretty much every high street bank, it will be there within a day with styling. It's a few days, they're telling you that it's going to be up to two weeks. I am guessing that this is the up limit and it's probably going to be actually there a lot quicker than that, but i don't get paid very many checks, so i haven't had a chance to actually go and test it out, but i like starting, you can't Go and do a quick deposit of a check by just taking a photo of it. Styling allow you to do that for low value checks with monzo.

There is no such feature, and so you have to send off every single check. So if you got a check from a relative for christmas for 25 pounds, you'll have to go and find a post box put it in an envelope. Do all that kind of stuff, and although that is somewhat easy, it would be nice if they added a feature that even some high street banks beginning to add to their accounts. I kind of feel it is somewhat overdue when it comes to customer service.

Monsters have definitely improved in recent months. You can now go and call them, and the messaging platform has improved slightly, but the times it takes to respond and the times you have to wait are still not very great, although i would have to say that they are no worse than most other banks. You can have an account with so in that respect, they're, not really any worse than that. The one thing i'll say to their advantage is they have a super helpful help section on their website where you can go and find almost anything you want.

It is also accessible through the app and most queries people will have that they probably go and call the customer service line for may well be addressed somewhere in there now. One problem that i wanted to mention in this review that people should probably be aware of is that monza this year have had some bad press for the fact that they've been closing a lot of accounts down now they are saying that they are doing it for Good reason: they're doing it because there's a lot of potential fraud cases and they have to investigate them and they have to go and block accounts while they do the investigation. But this seems to have affected a disproportionately high number of their customers. Certainly far far higher than what i have been hearing from other banks, the situation is not quite as bad as recently has been happening with muniz.

I have made a separate video about that. There seems to be a lot of people with their accounts, blocked for reasons like hmrc, sending them some money as a refund for tax or as for some other reason, but anyway, that's a whole separate topic. Monzo were in the same sort of space earlier this year. It seems to have improved somewhat, but still a disproportionately high number of customers have had their accounts blocked because they had some unusual transactions.

Some people said that they went and sent money to various bitcoin trading platforms or investment platforms, or had interactions with hmrc and monzo. May go and block your account now. I personally have not had any of these issues. I have not used the card in any of these ways anyway, so i can't tell you anything factual.

This is just purely anecdotal, based on lots of my viewers writing to me and telling me about these issues. The second thing - that's really important to note - is that monzo have this year published their annual account, which said that their company is at risk of not being able to continue to trade. Due to the severe amount of losses that they're incurring the company is losing a huge amount of money because they haven't figured out how to earn money. You noticed earlier in the review i mentioned how they have restricted their loans, which is going to be one of the things that would actually make them money, but because they haven't figured out how to operate them properly.

They incurred higher losses than expected. They have gone and pushed them right down, so they're, still working on that they're trying these premium accounts and according to them up to 100 000 people have taken them, but i still feel that that revenue is still going to be nowhere near to what they need To make this whole bank work we'll see what they come out with in due course, but earlier this month they went and secured 60 million pounds worth of additional funding from their investors, so that shows that their investors are continuing to believe that they can turn things Around so the business plans that they're showing to them must have something good in them, because otherwise they may not continue planning money into the business, so that probably should give people a little bit of confidence, and on top of that they are a regulated bank. Unlike some of the other companies that people choose to have accounts with that, i'm not gon na go into, but they are a fully regulated bank. Any money hold with monzo is protected by the financial compensation scheme for up to 85 000 pounds.

So if the worst was to happen, they do pay out quite quickly, and people should probably have a little bit of confidence from that as well. So i don't really think this is a big issue and certainly not one that you should use to determine whether you do or don't want to use monzo, as your bank account hope. You guys found this useful. If you have, please make sure you guys smash the like button for the youtube algorithm, if i've missed something make sure you tell me below, i probably have because i tried to make this video as short and succinct as possible.

Thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it and i'll see you guys later. You.