Why doesn’t Monzo have branches?

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Monzo's a fully-licenced UK bank, which means we can do all the basic things a normal bank does. You can set up Direct Debits and standing orders, get your salary paid in and take out an overdraft if you’re eligible.

But we can also do much, much more! You can open an account with us in minutes, talk to one of our customer support team any time of day or night, track your spending and see your balance update instantly. And all that through your smartphone.

We believe we can give you everything you need from a bank, without having branches. And the fact that we don’t have branches means we can keep costs low, and pass the benefits onto you.

There are a couple of things that might seem tricky because we don’t have branches, like paying in cash or withdrawing large amounts of money. But we’ve been working hard to make them as easy as we can, and you’d be surprised what you can do with a branchless bank!

Paying in cheques

Cheques aren’t as common as they used to be, but we know there are still a few floating around!

You can pay cheques into your Monzo account, and on average we help pay in about 12 cheques every day. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Write your account number on the back of the cheque, in the top-left corner

  2. Put your cheque in an envelope and write FREEPOST MONZO on the front (nothing else!)

  3. Find your nearest post box and pop it in

  4. Wait a few days for your cheque to reach us

  5. We’ll tell you once we've received it through in-app chat

  6. Five days after we get it, you’ll see the money in your account

Envelope

For extra peace of mind, you can also choose to send them to us by using a delivery method you can track.

Our address is:

Monzo

Broadwalk House

5 Appold Street

London

EC2A 2AG

In the future, we want to make this process even easier, and let you pay in cheques without having to go to a post box, root around for an envelope, or wait for a few days till you get your money.

Read this blog post to find out what we’re doing to help you pay in cheques just by taking a photo!

Paying in cash

You can pay cash into your Monzo account at any of the 28,000 convenience stores around the UK that show the PayPoint logo.

PayPoint logo
  1. Go to any shop that displays the PayPoint logo (you might be more familiar with their previous logo, and you can use this handy tool to help you find your nearest store)

  2. Give your Monzo card and your cash to the shopkeeper, who’ll use their PayPoint machine to start making the deposit

  3. They’ll give you back your card with a receipt, and we’ll send you a notification immediately to confirm you’ve made a deposit

  4. You’ll see the money in your account 10 minutes later, once PayPoint have checked everything’s okay with the deposit

PayPoint charges us for every deposit you make, so to help us offer cash deposits in a sustainable way, we pass on some of these costs to you.

We’ll charge you £1 for each deposit you make, and we’ll take the fee out of the money you pay in. So, if you hand £300 over to the shopkeeper, we’ll put £299 in your account.

You can deposit between £5-300 in one go. And you can pay in a maximum of £1,000 every six months.

If you’re 16-17 years old, that limit is lower, so you can only deposit a maximum of £500 every six months.

These limits help reduce the risk that people will use cash deposits for financial crime, while still making sure they’re useful to most people.

Find out more about how cash deposits work here.

Withdrawing lots of cash

You can usually withdraw up to £400 cash a day with your Monzo card.

That’s usually enough to cover your everyday spending, but we know sometimes you might need to withdraw more. Buying a used car is a common example!

If you need to withdraw cash beyond the £400 limit, just get in touch with us through your Monzo app. Once we’ve verified your identity and made sure it’s definitely you, we can temporarily raise your withdrawal limits.

The only other limits on how much money you can take out will be the amount of cash in the ATM, and of course your balance!

Making big bank transfers

You can transfer up to £10,000 a day to any other UK bank account through your Monzo app.

But sometimes you might need to make an even bigger payment, like if you’re buying a house or a car.

To help protect against fraudulent transactions, we don’t let you do this automatically through the app. But if you get in touch with us we can temporarily raise the limits on your account.

Just drop us a message through in-app chat. We’ll ask you a bit about the transaction you intend to make, and ask you to verify your identity to double-check it’s really you.

Once we’re confident everything’s fine, we can let you transfer as much as you need to.


What else do you use your bank branch for? Let us know on the community forum so we can make sure Monzo lets you do everything your old bank does, and more!