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Monzo Bank Ltd, is a digital, mobile-only bank based in the United Kingdom. Originally operating through a mobile app and a prepaid debit card, in April 2017 their UK banking licence restrictions were lifted, enabling them to offer a current account. Monzo was one of the earliest of a number of new app-based challenger banks in the UK.

History
It was founded as Mondo in 2015 by Tom Blomfield, Jonas Huckestein, Jason Bates, Paul Rippon and Gary Dolman. The team had met whilst working at Starling Bank. In February 2016, Mondo set the record for "quickest crowd-funding campaign in history" when it raised £1m in 96 seconds via the Crowdcube investment platform.

Two weeks prior to the name change, Monzo was granted a restricted banking licence, by the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority and as of April 2017 these restrictions have been lifted. Monzo had a number of prepaid debit cards in operation which it issued to users for testing purposes. These cards were in use until current accounts were made available to all and the prepaid program was closed on 4 April 2018.

On 16 May 2017, Monzo announced that over £250 million had been spent through its prepaid card, between 200,000 customers.

Monzo is registered at Companies House under the legal name 'Monzo Bank Ltd' and initially traded as Mondo. On 13 June 2016, a company blog post announced that the "Mondo" trademark had been legally challenged by an undisclosed company with a similar name. As a result, a naming suggestion contest was organised and the new name, "Monzo", was announced on 25 August 2016.

In October 2016, Monzo announced an 'interim' funding round valuing the company at £50M and raised £4.8M in the process led by Passion Capital. This round was followed by a second £2.5 million Crowdcube crowd-funding campaign with the total pledged quickly hitting the target amount.

On 17 July 2017, Monzo announced the current account preview and began inviting eligible customers to sign-up for a preview of the full current account. Initially, customers attended events at the company's offices in London but cards have also been sent out via post. In line with the company's general stance on transparency, the Monzo website includes a live counter showing progress on the rollout.

In October 2017, Monzo announced that it would be discontinuing free ATM withdrawals abroad, replacing them with a free monthly withdrawal of up to £200 and a charge of 3% on subsequent withdrawals. This change came into effect on 18 December 2017.

On 7 June 2018 Monzo announced an integration with IFTTT which allowed users to connect their account to smart devices and services. For example connecting Monzo to Amazon Alexa.

During June 2018, Monzo gained significant public interest after fraud analysts with the bank spotted signs of and publicly announced a Ticketmaster data breach in April 2018, before Ticketmaster had spotted the breach themselves, and two months before Ticketmaster admitted the breach had occurred.

On 25th June 2018, Monzo announced their teamed up with TransferWise to provide international money transfers from within their Monzo app. Existing TransferWise customer can connect their account to use along Monzo app. It was later anounced in November 2018 that interest would be paid on savings (in 'Savings Pots' above £1,000) in collaboration with Investec.