
Mondo, an app that's trying to replace brick-and-mortar banks - alexwoodcreates
http://www.thememo.com/2015/06/25/meet-mondo-the-app-thats-got-the-banks-worried/
======
cocoflunchy
This sounds like [http://simple.com](http://simple.com) for the UK. The bit
that worried me was

    
    
        we plan to make all the money we need from fair and transparent overdraft charges
    

... which means they have a strong incentive to have their customers
overdraft.

Simple's model feels more sustainable:

    
    
        Although we love technology, we don’t knock tradition. In the past, banks
        made most of their profits off interest margin—the difference between the
        amount of interest they make on loans, and the interest they pay customers
        on their deposits. Our partner bank splits this interest margin with Simple.
    
        When you swipe your debit card, the merchant pays a service fee
        (called interchange) to the issuing bank. Our partners split this
        revenue with us.

~~~
Osmium
Do you use Simple yourself, would you recommend them? I just read that they've
seen some significant teething problems:

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/10/months-after-its-upgrade-
si...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/10/months-after-its-upgrade-simples-
online-bank-is-still-broken/)

(I might need to open a personal US bank account soon but have no idea where
to start. I'd err towards a local credit union, but again, there are so many.
Edit: It looks like you have to be a permanent resident of the US to use
Simple, so not appropriate for people on temporary visas it seems.)

~~~
joshstrange
Not OP but I can answer this. I use Simple and I HIGHLY recommend them. I've
not had any of the issues mentioned in that article but had 1-2 friends that
use Simple that did have issues (around that upgrade) with deposits not
getting posted and/or transactions not being posted misleading them on the
true balance of their account. Simple cleared it all up and reimbursed them
like $50 for their trouble (on top of not charging overdraft fees in one
case). Simple's support is better than anything out there. PERIOD. They get
back to you in normally less than 1 hour (if you use their mobile/site chat)
and only once did I get what I felt like as a form letter. Most of the time
they are very personable (see:
[https://s.joshstrange.com/ZuVu.png](https://s.joshstrange.com/ZuVu.png) and
[https://s.joshstrange.com/BbKS.png](https://s.joshstrange.com/BbKS.png) \+
[https://s.joshstrange.com/glaC.png](https://s.joshstrange.com/glaC.png) I've
got a few more if you want to see them) and a joy to work with. If you have
other questions let me know.

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mangeletti
Did anyone else read the title as "one weird trick that's got bankers
worried"?

With all respect, the title is click bait and should probably be changed.

Update: It looks like the OP has been flagged (spam?). It moved from position
7 to off the front page, instantly.

~~~
alexwoodcreates
Hello, I'm the author and the person who shared the post.

Have I done something wrong to have this marked as spam?

I've written about financial tech startups for the past 5 years and can
confirm, banks are worried about these guys as well as Apollo bank which just
got a license this week.

~~~
dang
> Have I done something wrong to have this marked as spam?

Not really. I don't think the users who flagged this post were being very
fair, and we've turned the flags off. In their defense, though, HN does see a
lot of posts that look and read a bit like this one and really are spammy.
Users here are a bit different from general web readership in that they value
information over slogans and want the substantive details of a story. They
tend to look down on enthusiastic reporting as PR.

You're welcome to repost it (you'll need to use a slightly different URL to
bypass the duplicate detector). Give it a more substantive title, though, and
users here will probably react better. Something like the title we changed
this post to would be fine, or anything along those lines. Email us at
hn@ycombinator.com if you have any questions.

(I'm a moderator of HN.)

~~~
alexwoodcreates
Hi Dang,

Thanks so much for getting back to me, I appreciate it.

Have resubmitted and will take on the feedback for future posts.

~~~
dang
Posts using link shorteners get killed, so that one didn't go through.

All you need to do is make a tiny tweak to the original URL, such as adding or
removing a trailing slash or a query string. The duplicate detector is left
porous like this to allow reposts of good articles that haven't had much
attention yet.

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anthony_barker
Disclaimer I did work for an online only bank circa 2000 which shut down
several years later.

Most client sill want to see someone on the big life decisions: Mortgage,
Investment Asset Allocation, Inheritance etc. The chequing/current account (At
least in Canada) is generally used as a loss leader to get those big lucrative
items.

Being nimble with a regulator like the FCA, ACPR, OSFI, FED etc is difficult.
Guys like Apple who just provide the software can bypass local regulations
which is generally a lot easier to scale out and they won't get bogged down
with 6 month application processes, Quarterly financial audits, AML Audits,
BASEL III., shareholder approvals etc/

That said more competition in banking is good!

~~~
cmsj
FWIW, as a counter-anecdote, every time I have been to see my bank about a big
life decision, I have come away feeling that I might as well not have
bothered, because they just wanted to push me their most valuable products.

------
Osmium
I'd be really keen to try this. I'd love some Mint-style automatic money
management (see what I've spent where etc. without too much hassle), but
there's no safe way of using a Mint-style website in the UK that I know of,
and I haven't got time to export statements as .csv and manually tag each
transaction.

The screenshots in the article look exactly on-point. It's amazing to me that
existing banks haven't come up with something similar to this themselves. My
own bank's app is functional, but only just, and displays no imagination at
all.

~~~
vosper
It's not automatic at all, but I switched from Mint to You Need a Budget
(commonly referred to as YNAB) a couple of years ago, and have never looked
back. I've found it incredibly useful in managing spending and saving, and
very straightfoward once I got the hang of it (they have lots of useful
tutorials, too).

I think one of the advantages of YNAB is that it's not automatic - I used Mint
for ages, and would tend to forget about it because there's so little work to
do. The small amount of effort I put in going through transactions in YNAB
each week (it doesn't take more than 10 minutes, and it learns the frequent
categorisations) really makes me think about where I'm spending money.

The only work I have to do is downloading transaction data from my bank each
week, which is simple, and has the side-effect of encouraging me to minimise
the number of accounts I have open, because it makes managing YNAB simpler.

YNAB's not free software, but it is occasionally on sale. Even at full price
it's well worth the money, provided that you really want to take control of
your spending. It's available on Steam, so you may now be able to get a refund
if you don't like it (give it a chance, though - the initial setup is most of
the work, ongoing usage is much less).

~~~
Osmium
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll give it a go. I've just downloaded it and
a few small details give me pause (non-native UI, inconsistent high DPI
resources, okay but not great localisation), but it also looks legitimately
useful. Does it learn from past transactions how to assign categories, or do
you always have to do that manually?

~~~
vosper
I think it only auto-suggests categories for an exact match on the transaction
details. And you still have to confirm it. This is actually what I want,
because (for example) when I go to the Walgreens (a pharmacy) near my work I
want to count that against my spending, and when my wife goes to the one near
her work it should count against her spending. The only difference that shows
up in the transactions from the bank is a number, eg "Walgreens #4567" and
"Walgreens #1234". Having figured out which one is which it can now auto-
suggest that match. But it won't try to guess what "Walgreens 9999" should be
if it hasn't seen that before.

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Roritharr
What i think would be truly disruptive is a proper bank for modern businesses.

~~~
Yhippa
Something that automates or assists with business banking tasks?

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programmernews3
Those screenshots are really really creepy. I suppose that is the modern world
though, surveilled and creepy.

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ZenoArrow
This is really interesting, I'll keep an eye out for Mondo in the future.
Thanks for sharing the link.

