Monzo is gearing up to launch a mobile phone service, following in the footsteps of fellow European fintechs such as Revolut and Klarna.
The UK neobank is in “early stages” of developing the product, the Financial Times reported on Monday.
“When we heard from our customers that mobile contracts can be a pain point, we set out to explore how we could do this the Monzo way,” a Monzo spokesperson told the paper.
Founded in 2015, Monzo is one of the UK’s top neobanks with more than 12m customers and £16bn in deposits — and now the latest European fintech looking to diversify revenue with a mobile network offering.
In the past year, German neobank N26, buy now, pay later fintech Klarna and UK financial superapp Revolut have also announced plans to offer mobile phone services across Europe and the UK.
Those fintechs have all moved into the space as mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), third-party companies which can lease or buy access to calls, data and texts from established mobile network operators (MNOs) such as EE, 02 or Three.
Some experts have been sceptical of the fintechs’ plans, warning it will take “a very long time” for them to mount any serious challenge to the incumbents.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/monzo-mobile-plans/
