Listen to Monzo founder on building a ‘smart’ bank, fintech bubble, and turning down acquisition offer

Yesterday I caught up with Tom Blomfield, co-founder and CEO of ‘challenger’ financial institution Monzo.

The startup is creating a digital-only financial institution, or “smart financial institution,” as Blomfield phone calls it, and last August was granted a Uk banking licence ‘with restrictions’ by the Uk regulators FCA and PRA, as it prepares to start a full present-day account afterwards this year.

As it exists today, Monzo’s extra than one hundred,000 buyers get obtain to a pre-compensated Mastercard and accompanying iOS and Android application. It provides the potential to do factors like monitor your paying out in realtime, look at geolocation-marked transactions on a map, look at paying out by class, and get a graphical timeline of your total expenditure.

In our phone, we talked about why Blomfield and his eighty-furthermore crew are creating a new financial institution, no matter if or not we are in a fintech banking application bubble, and what he thinks the impact will be of approaching PSD2 EU regulation meant to drive incumbent banking companies to open up up.

Candidly, he also verified that Monzo has now turned down an acquisition give from a big financial institution, and defined why he thinks it would have been a error to sell.

You can hear to a evenly edited edition of the interview beneath.