Monzo Faces £21M Penalty Over Compliance

Hey Digital Banking Fanatic!
The FCA has fined Monzo Bank £21.1 million, which is about 1/3 of its latest pre-tax profit! 🤯
Monzo CEO TS Anil responded: “The FCA’s findings relate to a historical period that ended three years ago… with our learnings at the time leading to substantial improvements in our controls.”
The penalty covers failures in Monzo’s financial crime controls in the past, including gaps in onboarding, risk checks, and monitoring, leading to the onboarding of tens of thousands of high-risk customers. 😬
Keep scrolling for more on this and the latest in Digital Banking 👇 I’ll be back tomorrow!
Cheers,
Stay ahead in the US FinTech revolution. Subscribe now for weekly insights delivered straight to your inbox.

INSIGHTS
🇬🇧 UK neobanks double spending on staff, marketing, and legal fees as sector booms. This challenger banks’ results season saw the FinTechs consolidate their profitability streak, with Monzo and Revolut both in the green for the second year running.
NEWS
🇬🇧 FCA fines Monzo £21m for failings in financial crime controls. Monzo failed to design, implement, and maintain adequate customer onboarding, customer risk assessment, and transaction monitoring systems to mitigate the risk of financial crime.
🇨🇳 Revolut has partnered with Ant International using Alipay to enable its customers to send money to China in Chinese Yuan. The partnership aims to provide compliant and efficient cross-border remittance services for users. Additionally, Revolut reaches 5 million customers in Spain and surpasses 3 billion in deposits. The total number of transactions grew by 120% y-o-y, highlighting the growing reliance on the platform for day-to-day financial management.
🇬🇧 Revolut has selected the French protocol Morpho to power a new DeFi yield product. The move is aimed at offering Revolut’s millions of users a crypto-based alternative to traditional savings accounts. Revolut launches stocks and shares Isa and UK-listed ETFs to get Britons investing in home-grown companies. Customers will be able to invest in a few taps using the bank's app, starting from £1.
🇦🇪 Abu Dhabi sovereign Mubadala fund in talks to buy $100M Revolut stake. If completed, the transaction would add to a smaller stake in Revolut, which was bought by the Abu Dhabi fund last year as part of a wider secondary transaction. Read more
🌍 Marc Bürki, CEO of Swissquote, wants to develop Yuh internationally. He said, "After all, foreigners, companies like Revolut or N26, also come to us." Switzerland is certainly a good market for Yuh, which is now profitable. "But it only has nine million inhabitants." And size is crucial in the mass-market sector in which the startup operates.
🇺🇸 Neon hires ex-Google Ben Serridge as Chief Product Officer with a focus on AI. The executive will be responsible for leading the AI strategy applied to the company's products. The focus is on personalizing the user experience and gaining operational efficiency.
🇬🇧 Finmo, the Treasury and Payments Platform, secures UK EMI license and expands its global footprint. With the EMI license, Finmo is now authorized to issue electronic money and offer a range of payment services in the UK, including account issuance, domestic and cross-border fund transfers, and foreign exchange transactions.
🇦🇺 Commonwealth Bank and Westpac reveal major payment changes for millions of customers. Mastercard’s Click To Pay allows customers to pay online without having to manually type in all their payment details and is designed to stamp out card-related fraud, which costs Aussies more than $2 billion a year.
🇷🇴 Zen.com has announced a partnership with Romanian-based Libra Internet Bank. Clients will be able to access accounts with local IBANs. As part of the partnership, Zen will gain access to accounts held in Romanian lei. It will also generate virtual IBANs in this currency for individual and business customers.
Want your message in front of 100.000+ Digital Banking fanatics, founders, investors, and operators?
Shoot me a message on LinkedIn or send me an e-mail.
