Monzo Launches New Premium Consumer Banking Accounts

U.K. digital bank Monzo is taking another crack at offering premium online consumer banking accounts with features designed to help account holders create — and abide by — budgets.

The new options allow customers to create personalized categories to track transactions, round up charges to divert extra funds to savings accounts and split up single transactions across multiple categories, “to make your spending reports really accurate,” the company noted.

Customers can also create and delete virtual debit cards as an added safety feature. The virtual cards are meant to protect the customer’s actual debit card number when shopping online.

Monzo wrote in its announcement of the new offering: “Each virtual card has a different card number, expiration date and security code. But when you use your virtual card to make a payment, you’ll see the spending in your Monzo account as normal. You can cancel your virtual card in a few taps from the Monzo app, and create a brand-new one whenever you need to.”

The digital bank released both free and premium business bank accounts in March after a year-long trial period, which allowed the company to adjust the accounts to incorporate the services that it found to be most popular.

Monzo placed No. 4 in PYMNTS’ most recent Provider Ranking of Digital Banking Apps.

The new consumer offering comes as Monzo reels from the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. In June, the bank laid off 120 employees and revealed a valuation of 40 percent less than a year ago. Executives said at the time that Monzo had about four million users.