Monzo/Starling Banking/Revolut

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Hoping to transition completely to Monzo as far as current account goes.

Been using it as my day to day spending account for the past few years, transferring money over from time to time.

And yeah the Plus doesn’t seem that great when you delve into it.

Great to see how far Monzo have come though, I started using when they were prepaid only.

I need to delve into pots more, I’ve not really explored them, just saw you can assign direct debits to pots...I’m late but that’s an excellent feature.
 
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Soldato
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15 Feb 2003
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I recently complained about these companies updating apps and effectively locking you out until you update. Something you might be able to do if on a slow connection abroad. Some of the apps are over MB.

Nationwide, has got it right. A while ago, I received a notification from them, this app will stop working in 14 days (could have been more I can't remember), but I was notified and so knew to ensure It was updated in time, thus continuing my access.

Yesterday I opened my Tide banking app. "this app is unsupported, please download the new version". No warning nothing, just a link to the app store. The update is 115mb, and according to the change log summary doesn't feature any security related updates, so really should be essential.

In this regard it seems that there are some things that the old institutions are getting right.
 
Soldato
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What do the virtual cards protect you against actually? I mean it protects you from a scammer getting hold of your real card details, but surely if they have your virtual details they can empty your account just the same.
 
Soldato
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What do the virtual cards protect you against actually? I mean it protects you from a scammer getting hold of your real card details, but surely if they have your virtual details they can empty your account just the same.

It depends. Some are throw away cards. Used for one transaction, then thats it. That is the ultimate protection. The other one, I'm not so sure. I guess you just turn it on and off as required, where as your main card stays on.
 
Soldato
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Edit2:
Previously they had planned to include credit scores for free, but now it's paywalled in the new Monzo plus, that's damn sneaky!

https://monzo.com/blog/2020/02/24/credit-scores

It's TransUnion which is the least used credit reference agency used by creditors anyway.

Plus plenty of free services out there for free accesses to your credit file from all 3 agencies. So paying £5 is not a perk in my book.
 
Soldato
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What do the virtual cards protect you against actually? I mean it protects you from a scammer getting hold of your real card details, but surely if they have your virtual details they can empty your account just the same.

It depends. Some are throw away cards. Used for one transaction, then thats it. That is the ultimate protection. The other one, I'm not so sure. I guess you just turn it on and off as required, where as your main card stays on.

As long as you aren’t stupid you are covered anyway so virtual cards aren’t really needed. You could argue you’re paying for them to protect monzo :p

Monzo is great but £5 for not much - no thanks.
 
Soldato
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I was talking more in general. Monzo is not the first or only provider of Virtual cards. They have been in Revolut for nearly 3 years.

Yes, you can always do a chargeback. Depending on whether it a Mastercard or Visa, the timings are slightly different, but both take a long time. I did chargeback for something I bought (never received) in Spain, on my Revolut account. It's simple, took about 4 weeks, but was a bit painful having to collate all the evidence, and produce a write up all from within the app. I proper website portal for it would have been better.
 
Soldato
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16 Apr 2007
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UK
Anyone opened a Starling Business Account recently? I’m still waiting to be processed, and wondered how long it normally takes?

I understand, of course, things might take a little longer at the moment.

EDIT: Just reading about virtual cards above - I’ve had a Revolut account for a good couple of years now, and I love using the “Disposable Virtual Cards” for all online purchases. Once you use it, you get a notification to say that it’s been used and so it’s been destroyed and a new virtual card number is generated.

I can’t really see the point in Virtual cards, as explained by others above, but disposable virtual cards should really be the future for all online transactions, in my opinion. Is this something that Monzo or Starling might introduce? I’ve been wary of using Revolut as my main account due to it not being as protected as other fin tech banks.
 
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Soldato
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22 Apr 2009
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North-West
Anyone opened a Starling Business Account recently? I’m still waiting to be processed, and wondered how long it normally takes?

I understand, of course, things might take a little longer at the moment.

EDIT: Just reading about virtual cards above - I’ve had a Revolut account for a good couple of years now, and I love using the “Disposable Virtual Cards” for all online purchases. Once you use it, you get a notification to say that it’s been used and so it’s been destroyed and a new virtual card number is generated.

I can’t really see the point in Virtual cards, as explained by others above, but disposable virtual cards should really be the future for all online transactions, in my opinion. Is this something that Monzo or Starling might introduce? I’ve been wary of using Revolut as my main account due to it not being as protected as other fin tech banks.

Gave up waiting for Starling Business account. Every other day they would ask for more information from their list of you only need x number of these.

Monzo opened in a day. Before that used Mettle which is NatWest.
 
Soldato
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Gave up waiting for Starling Business account. Every other day they would ask for more information from their list of you only need x number of these.

Monzo opened in a day. Before that used Mettle which is NatWest.

Yeah I got a phone call from them and they wanted proof of business activity. So I sent them an invoice, and it was activated the next day.

Got my business account card through yesterday - very nice looking card :)
 
Soldato
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Surely Visa/MasterCard will sharp run out of numbers to issue from all these disposable virtual cards.

Which make you wonder. Why isn't there a credible European payments company, there used to be smaller ones, but they all got bought up? Japan has it's own. Sure VISA and Mastercard were partly formed by British banks but both are US based. If VISA and Mastercard ever stopped their operations or were forced to, what happens to payments? How can you have security if society can't process payments for goods and services.

EDIT: seems they want just that. Once there is a credible alternative, I'd go so far as to enshirne in law that all places in the EU that accept VISA/Mastercard must also accept the EU alternative. Nothing should change at POS, it should be done behind the scenes by the banks.
https://www.finextra.com/newsarticl...ank-backed-alternative-to-visa-and-mastercard


On a seperate note. I've noticed that in some countries when payment with Monzo, the payment will not go through if paying in the local currency, only USD payments will work. This has been 100% the case in the Dutch Caribbean, despite each country in the Kingdom having its own currency.
 
Soldato
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Surely Visa/MasterCard will sharp run out of numbers to issue from all these disposable virtual cards.

Card numbers will get re-used. Once re-issued they'll have a different CVV number and expiry date to distinguyish them from previous issues of that number. Gernerally virtual cards will come from a fairly small pool of numbers which get used cyclicly.
 
Soldato
Joined
15 Feb 2003
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10,042
Location
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Yep the numbers define the card issuer Visa/Mastercard, also the country.

I like the proper throw away cards, but the non-expiring ones are daft. I don't understand why Revolut (since they seem to be one of the first for these type of features), don't offer virtual cards for different countries. At least for Europe. Actually Revolut are one of the worst for this as their European customers get UK cards, so they can't even use them for some things in their home countries.
 
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