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Monzo, the UK's challenger bank, which has more than two million customers and is rated unicorn, has officially announced its expansion into the United States.
The tentative move – of which TechCrunch exclusively reported that it was going on five months ago – an American Monzo app and a connected Mastercard debit card will be available via in-person registrations at events that will take place soon. The deployment will consist initially of a few thousand cards, supplemented by a list of waiting for a wider launch.
In a call, Monzo Co-founder and CEO Tom Blomfield told me that he believed the key to the breakthrough in North America was to create a fully localized version of Monzo, based on a careful listening of US users to find the appropriate market. There are obvious and less obvious cultural and technical differences in the way British and Americans save, spend and manage their finances, which will require significant product divergence.
In other words, Monzo does not assume that the specific features of the UK offering, which currently has 200,000 registrants each month, will automatically be passed on to customers on the other side of the pond. To succeed also in the United States, it will be necessary to focus on the details and in a sense, the company will have to act as a start-up in what is now a scaling if it wants to repeat much of the Monzo game book.
In the UK, Monzo currently has an NPS score of 80, which, according to Blomfield, is unusually high for a bank. He also tells me that 60% of registrations in the UK remain active in the long term, trading once a week. However, in return, the percentage of Monzo users who pay their salary on the Monzo account is between 27% and 30% of active users, suggesting that a significant number of Monzo customers do not 39 not yet use as main account. . The Monzo employee definition is anyone who deposits at least £ 1,000 per month by bank transfer.
Back in America, Monzo announced that it would turn the US version into a "full digital account" accessible on your smartphone and that it could extend to various "Monzo and third-party financial services".
Initially, the challenger bank works in partnership with an established US bank, but also strives to apply for its own US bank license. As in the UK, the plan is to build and own as many technologies as possible, which, according to Blomfield, will be needed to give Monzo the agility to serve its American customers.
To achieve this, Monzo will open an office in Los Angeles, California, chosen "because it's not San Francisco," says Blomfield. He said he was anxious to place Monzo in the Silicon Valley bubble, where rents are not only ridiculously high, but group thinking could be detrimental.
Meanwhile, Monzo joins a growing list of London-based B2C fintechs hoping to conquer the United States. Earlier in the day, the Emma fund management app announced its launch in the United States via a partnership with Plaid. Another example is Chatbot and App Cleo, which quietly entered the United States nine months ago.
In addition, Blomfield has always spoken openly about his ambition to bring Monzo to the United States. Over the years, the challenger bank has attracted a wide range of US investors. They include General Catalyst, Thrive Capital, Goodwater Capital, Stripe, Michael Moritz and Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom. More recently, TechCrunch announced that Y Combinator was also on the verge of joining the company's cap table.
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