When Monzo asked its Twitter followers what feature they would like to add, Revolut replied, “Auto-switch to Revolut button.” Then all hell broke loose.
Everything started when challenger bank Monzo’s Twitter account tweeted, “If you had a magic wand, what’s [the] one feature you’d add to Monzo tomorrow?”
The UK FinTech firm did initially receive a lot of feedback from customers. Monzo seemed to like some of the ideas such as the brainwave to automatically pull money from a dedicated account in case the balance dropped below zero.
Another suggestion was that the company should tap into the family FinTech market by issuing credit cards for children that their parents could monitor in order to teach their kids about money. Several startups such as PCKT Money and Greenlight Financial Technology are already offering a service along those lines.
Then there were the ideas about payment blocking at fast food outlets, re-order pots, American Express integration that Monzo said it was working on, virtual cards and business accounts with multiple people with significant control, able to export to accounting packages.
Other ideas, like the notion that Monzo should include a local dating function was met with a simple, “Wha-wh-… how would that even work?”
Then Revolut decided to pitch in. The Monzo rival suggested, “Auto-switch to Revolut button.”
Some Twitter users seemed to enjoy the hijack.
“Love the comment amazing,” one tweeted.
A second person simply tweeted, “Hahahah. Brutal.”
However, the tweet did not go down well with everyone
“Oh God, this is making me cringe,” one person tweeted.
Others opted to highlight that Revolut does not have a stellar track record when it comes to its customer service.
For instance, Revolut’s customers represented 80% of the 3,100 customer complaints logged with dispute resolution service Resolver in the past 18 months concerning challenger banks. Comparatively, Monzo’s customers were behind roughly 20% of the complaints.
“Who would switch to Revolut?” one person asked. “Perhaps someone who has metal fetish to get that card. What else is there? No customer service that’s for sure. But thanks, that made me laugh.”
“[Good] luck [trying to] speak to someone when [your] account is locked for some random reasons [or they’re] MIA whenever you have a question. Definitely switching to Monzo. I used to love Revolut. Not anymore,” one user tweeted.
“Monzo’s DNA compared to Revolut’s will always put them on top in my opinion,” tweeted one Monzo aficionado.
Others replied by sharing a story from Wired criticising the questionable ways employees and recruits had reportedly been treated by Revolut in the past.
“Have you stopped abusing your employees? It seems not,” one person asked.
“If only we could get an auto leave button to escape the horror that is Revolut,” said another one.
Others simply said they would not choose either challenger bank over their competitor Starling Bank.
Of course, Monzo is not without its setbacks. In September 2019, the challenger bank had to cancel Monzo Plus, its premium membership service, after just a few months. The cancellation sparked questions about whether or not Monzo would be able to become profitable anytime soon so that investors could see a return on their investment.
It has also faced complaints from users who have been locked out of their accounts.
In August 2019, Monzo apologised for a bug that had stored PIN codes in log files that engineers had accesses to. The FinTech unicorn explained that Monzo stores all customers’ PIN codes in secure area of the bank’s systems and has strict rules in place for who can access these files. However, a bug in the that had also recorded some people’s PIN codes in encrypted log files that the engineers could read.
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