Makes sense really. I just done get why golden tickets still exist. I think they just reverted back to it because it was easier.
I’m surprised they’ve scrapped it, £10 per user is not a lot in terms of acquisition costs.
First Direct just straight up pay you £50 for opening a current account.
Off-topic here:
First Direct (a no-branch bank) to HSBC is what Xerox PARC (creators of the mouse-driven graphical user interface and a computer mouse) was to Xerox (who loved them printers because steady cash flow innit). A beautiful product at first and way ahead of the game even before mobile apps became a thing only to be ignored by its clueless parent (Xerox/HSBC) and loved/copied by future competitors (Apple/Monzo/Revolut/Square/etc).
“After an hour looking at demos, they [visitors] understood our technology and what it meant, more than any Xerox executive understood after years of showing it to them,”
(Did Steve Jobs steal everything from Xerox PARC? - Mac History)
There are those that even pay you more e.g. Natwest are currently offering £150 for signing up (+ 2% cashback on bills in exchange for £2/pm or no cashback for no fee), but like with all big bank accounts, those sign-up offers are only eligible if you switch banks, as in you close down your old one and make their account your main one. That then guarantees you’ll actively be using the account making it worthwhile, especially as many tend to have T&Cs about keeping the account open for x amount of time to get the full benefit of the free cash offer.
As per the article though, Monzo has been giving the money away in exchange purely for a friend referral and a one-off use. Then as the article points out only 30% of active users deposit at least £1,000 and the number of active users out of the 3m user base is still likely to be fairly low considering, so all of a sudden it doesn’t sound so worthwhile after all.
Word of mouth may have helped them get the growth and recognition they currently have, but until more people start actively using their accounts as their main one, I can’t see them bringing back another incentive any time soon. If they do then they might follow suite by doing a switch deal as that would guarantee the income, although they may not feel confident enough that most consumers would be willing to trust them to that extent yet.