Monzo was founded in 2015 and entered the market with a single product – the MasterCard bank card, which can be recharged through its app and used for free international transfers. Over the past 5 years, Monzo has managed to attract more than 3 million customers who have abandoned the services of traditional banks.
Monzo is one of the largest fintech players in the British market. The company was founded in 2015 by Tom Blomfield, an Oxford graduate. It has managed to become one of the leading challenger banks, the main features of which are the absence of physical branches and the emphasis on communication with the user through a mobile app.
Blomfield decided to start his fintech startup called Mondo in 2015. One of the first venture capital funds to invest in the startup was London-based Passion Capital. In total, Passion Capital invested £7 million in Blomfield’s startup.
On March 3, 2016, using the crowdfunding platform Crowdcube, Mondo successfully completed the campaign, managing to raise the designated goal of 1 million pounds. It only took Mondo 96 seconds to raise the funds: the fastest crowdfunding campaign in history.
Mondo became the first banking service in the UK to allow its customers to become shareholders through a crowdfunding platform. The average investment was equal to £537. As a result, 3.3% of the company’s shares were shared with 1,861 investors.
In 2016, shortly before receiving a banking license, the company announced that it was looking for a new name for itself. The original Mondo name had to be changed because of problems with the rights holders-they had registered the trademark under a similar name before Blomfield’s company became active.
The company announced a contest for a new name among users. Monzo turned out to be the most successful option, and all customers who suggested this name received a corporate hoodie with their suggested name.
The distinctive feature of Monzo is the bright coral color of the bank cards. The company originally planned to produce cards in this color only for a test batch, but customers really liked the hue, and in 2019 coral even became the color of the year according to Pantone.
Monzo is positioning itself as a bank in a smartphone. No physical branches or bank branches – all transactions are done online and managed by a mobile app. To open an account you do not need to leave your home, just download and install the app on your smartphone and go through a simple verification procedure. Monzo offers its customers several types of bank accounts: personal, joint, and business accounts.
As a personal account holder, you can use the full range of services available for a regular bank account, e.g. use Monzo to receive your salary, set monthly utility bill payments, withdraw cash from ATMs, and send international money transfers.
What is Monzo?
Monzo is the name of one of the loudest online banking start-ups of the 2010s. The bank, established in 2015, has no physical offices, as is operating online, offering its users a super simple application with a clear interface and 24/7 client support.
In terms of visual identity, Monzo is a very stable brand, and even after the rename, which happened in 2016, the company decided to keep its original design concept, leaving the emblem and color palette absolutely untouched.
The Original logo of the online bank, designed in 2015, was composed of a colorful geometric emblem, set on the left from the bold lowercase “Mondo” inscription in a dark shade of blue. The emblem depicted a stylized capital letter “M”, formed by four parallelograms in four different shades — blue, teal, yellow, and red. All colors were very calm and muted, which added an interesting mood to the badge.
The redesign of 2016 was held after the rename of the bank to Monzo. Designers decided to keep the initial color palette and emblem, but slightly switched the disposition of the elements, so now the geometric “M” is enlarged and placed above the lowercase dark-blue wordmark in a traditional sans-serif typeface.
The extra-bold and stable lettering from the primary Monzo logo is set in the lowercase of a traditional sans-serif typeface with massive characters. The closest fonts to the one, used in this insignia, are, probably, Majorant Bold, or ITC Avant Garde Gothic Paneuropean Bold.
As for the color palette of the Monzo visual identity, it is based on a combination of muted and smooth shades of blue, green, yellow, and red, which resemble the Google corporate palette and adds some extra professionalism and strength to the emblem.