Monzo one of the first app-based challenger banks in the UK, has received their full banking license and are discontinuing their prepaid debit card strategy for traditional debit card most likely due to margins.
Quote In October last year, we said we’d begin shutting down the prepaid Mastercard® programme early this year. Today we’re announcing that our aim is to do this in early April, so everyone can move to a fully upgraded current account.
Monzo deliberately started operating through a mobile app and a prepaid debit card with the strategy of testing what they were building and to get Monzo into the hands of customers quicker until they received a full banking license. It is an interesting strategy to start the program with prepaid cards and then convert the cardholders to debit cards and it seems to have worked over 450,000 cards were issued and 200,000 have already converted.
Overview by Sue Brown, Director, Prepaid Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
Read the quoted story here