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Comment by flurdy | Hacker News Reader

Within the echo chamber of my friends in London most now have a Monzo account. I would say 60% use Monzo. 20% perhaps use similar banks Revolut or Starling (though for some it is because they work for them). And perhaps 20ish% still haven't switched but all seem keen to.

Granted this is a very niche tech-savvy group of people between 20 and 40, but the established banks must be starting to feel the effects?

Most have a regular bank as their main account but like me hardly use it anymore, and some probably closed them altogether.

Though I am feeling more resistance from family and my non tech friends. But I think with time they will also try it and be converted.

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I'm in the same demographic, same kinda of social group, and most of the people I know who use monzo still don't use it as the account where they store the bulk of their cash, it is more for travelling than anything else. The free (up to £200) withdrawals and inter-bank exchange rate make it a no-brainer for that, but there's still nothing about it which would make me switch away from a current account with a decent interest rate and added extras like insurance, or cashback on bills.

What UK current account do you have with a decent interest rate? By decent do you mean 0.02% or something?

Why do you care about interest on a current account? How much are you going to keep in there anyway?

Depends on individual and outgoing mine has 2-4k I am not aggressively filling my ISA's at the moment so it might as well sit there.

So even at an astronomical interest rate of something like 3% that's still not even really worth more than half an hour of time shopping around to get a better rate.

Well I am derisking and taking money out of my PtP other wise I could get 4% with zopa

I keep 3 months pay as emergency cash on hand in that account.

I think Starling is 2%.

Starling is 0.5% for balances up to £2000, and 0.25% for balances up to £85000

I use santander, which has 1.5% interest (not amazing, but better than nothing) + 3% cashback on phone and internet bills, 2% on utilities and 1% on council tax / mortgages, which adds up to significantly more than the interest over the course of a year.

> switch away from a current account with a decent interest rate and added extras like insurance, or cashback on bills

what. First, there are no offers with decent interest rates out there. Second, Revolut has insurance. Third, Monzo is so awesome that most people just use it even though it's a debit card.

you can easily get 3-5% on a current account if you shop around a bit, and are willing to put up with switching once a year (a bit much for me, but some folk will go to the effort for the sake of a couple hundred quid).

when I say insurance, I mean, for instance, when I had a halifax current account, they threw in AA coverage, and mobile phone insurance as part of having a current account with them. I'm not aware of any challenger bank that has extras like that.

I'm a millennial working in tech in the UK and I've never heard of it! I'll have to take a look. It'll probably turn up here in the North in three years like most new things.

They have done several events in Manchester already

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