[noneeeed]

As someone with a Monzo account, but whose main accounts are with Barclays and Nationwide, I find the hype around the "challenger banks" in the UK a bit unexpected. I'm not really sure I understand what they are offering that is so revolutionary. I still think it's great they exist as competition is overdue in the UK banking sector, and I hope they do well.

I find Monzo works well for what I use it for, which is tracking my daily small item spending (getting lunch, buying a coffee etc), while the Barclays and Natwest apps work well for the "grown-up" banking. Between the latter two I have 4 bank accounts, two credit cards and two mortgages, and the apps (combined with Faster Payment's awesome transfer time) make it ridiculously easy to manage my finances.

Monzo app is definitely very nicely done, and there are some neat features, but for my day-to-day banking I have absolutely no issue getting everything done with the Barclays and Nationwide apps. Both could do with a bit of UX work and decluttering, but they are perfectly fine.

Are the rest of the main banks just really awful compared with Barclays and Nationwide?

[westiseast]

Agreed.

I have a fancy colored debit card now, which is cool.

Tend to use my HSBC for direct debits and bills, and Monzo for daily life/luxury/fun items.

It just seems like the legacy banks are awful rather than Monzo is breaking boundaries. I have a Chinese bank card and I get opt-in text notifications for my spending and have done for years.