Monzo has long been a darling of the UK FinTech sector. However, after the bank shut down its premium offering just months after opening it, some are concerned that it might be in for some tough times ahead.
Monzo Plus was unveiled in April. It was a premium membership that cost £6 per month and offered perks like different coloured cards as well as a selection of additional perks.
The premium membership has now been scrapped after first being revised to offer extra ATM withdrawal allowance and travel insurance, ThisIsMoney reports.
Even though Monzo has hinted that it might relaunch the subscription service under another name, at the moment the people who bought into the premium membership will be refunded.
And some are concerned that this might only be the beginning of Monzo’s problems. One of them is James Cook, special correspondent at The Telegraph, who suggested that the setback would raise concerns among investors keen to see the challenger make a profit, enabling them to see a return on their investment.
Although, he suggested that it might be too early to put Monzo out for the count as other challenger banks like Revolut and Curve have both been able to launch successful subscription services.
And there is certainly still an appetite for investors to put their money into challenger banks. Investment in the sector has increased from $150.9m in 2014 to $1.97bn in 2018, according to FinTech Global’s data. And challenger banks have been able to attract over $1.54bn in the first six months of 2019 alone.
Nevertheless, this is not the first issue the challenger bank has faced recently. Monzo faced the wrath and concern of its customers in July when several customers were suddenly locked out from their money when the bank’s services went down. Other customers reported that they were unable to access their accounts or that it showed old or incomplete information.
And in August, it Monzo apologized after it found out that it had stored PIN codes on log files that its engineers had access to.
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