Death to wallets, freedom to pockets

Photo: Shutterstock

Why walk around with a wallet full of bank cards if the answer to all your consumer needs is hiding in the Monese smartphone application?

Traditional banks now have a new challenger. Monese enables all smartphone users to instantly open a UK bank account, regardless of whether they live in the UK or not.

Photo: Shutterstock

This means that the service is especially interesting to new-age nomads who live hopping from one continent to another, carrying their work around in laptops and phones, but still want the stability of having at least a bank account in one of the main financial centres of the world.

Monese believes that in 2015, when it created the first one hundred percent mobile current account, it changed the world of banking forever. The next step forward was made by creating a revolutionary customer on-boarding process that accepts virtually every customer that applies, even if they are from a different country, don’t have a credit history, or don’t have a regular fixed income.

Monese now prides itself on having over a million account holders, with at least 3,000 more joining every day.

As a new user, you simply need to download the app on your phone and follow the step-by-step instruction, including the confirmation of your identity with an ID document.

Monese is currently available to anyone living within the European Economic Area (EEA). By this spring, more than a million users have chosen Monese, but the number has since been growing by at least 3,000 new users a day.

So why choose a Monese account? Because it offers everything that banks do, except that it takes the annoying bureaucracy and unnecessary plastic cards out of the equation. Well, to those of you who still want to use plastic, despite the extensive possibilities offered by Android Pay and Apple Pay, a contactless card is available for €4.95 (or pounds for UK users).

The basic Starter package, similar to competitive financial services providers such as N26 and Revolut , is free; however, this means that various services will cost you more. You will pay one euro for ATM cash withdrawals, at least twice as much for transfers abroad, and foreign currency payments will be charged a 2% commission to the mid-market exchange rate.

If you convince a friend to open an account, you both get 15 pounds, which is the amount of the monthly subscription to the Premium package.

The more active or demanding users therefore profit more by upgrading to a Plus or Premium subscription. The first costs €4.95 and comes with a free contactless debit card, six free ATM cash withdrawals (every subsequent withdrawal costs one euro), cheaper transfers, and lower surcharges for foreign currency payments (half a percent to the mid-market exchange rate).

The Premium package offers all of the above without extra charges. For €14.95 per month, you can enjoy all the Monese services carefree, from unlimited ATM cash withdrawals to free transfers and payments.

Photo: Monese

If you have a lot of friends, you can enjoy the perks of your new online bank account practically for free. For every friend that you convince to open a Monese account, you get £15 when they make their first payment. What’s more, your friend will receive the same amount in their account.

Life per month has brought an end to hidden costs in the field of financial services, and even more so, greater comfort to subscribers. There is no longer any need to go to the bank for the majority of financial services. You simply need the right app on your smartphone.