Member Article

Monzo to bring card processing in-house after system outages

Digital-only challenger bank Monzo has moved to apologise for the system outages which have affected some of its users in the last week, with co-founder Tom Blomfield admitting the outages may continue for the next few days.

In an emailed statement to its users, the London-based FinTech firm said that its card processor had been experiencing technical issues over the last few days which had meant many Monzo users have had their payments rejected.

Monzo’s service suffered similar outages back in March, while users also had problems using their eye-catching Monzo cards in early July at the same time as fellow FinTech challengers Revolut, Starling Bank, Loot and Curve suffered outages.

The issue served to draw attention to the potential bottleneck underlying the tech of many of the buzzy FinTech firms currently vying for market share as large swathes of them rely on the same card issuer for their payment cards.

Blomfield admitted that the outages were ‘unacceptable’ and, in a move to bolster confidence, said that the challenger bank would be moving card processing in-house, particularly with the wider launch of its current accounts on the horizon.

In the email, Blomfield said: “People across the UK have come to rely on their Monzo cards and if at times you can’t use your card, you lose trust in us.

“These outages are unacceptable. I want to personally recognise that and apologise on behalf of the whole company.

“There is a glimmer of hope, though. Our in-house Mastercard card processor is now live and current account debit cards have been working well for the last couple of months, unaffected by these issues. We believe it will be a more stable base on which to run the bank.”

Blomfield added that Monzo was adding 20,000 current accounts every month with the aim of rolling them out to all users by the Autumn.

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