Hi @A_T and welcome to the forum 
Thanks for your feedback - it is always good (if painful) to hear particularly from an investor perspective and one with your experience.
Just taking your points
- PayID - we’re kicking work off now on this - it is a major priority and a big gap we know - it’s a big piece of work so to launch with it would have delayed us so long we took the call to launch without it - as a brand new bank, this one - as I’m sure you know with your experience - takes a while, but it is under way and you’re not the only one who’s pretty frustrated it’s not there.
- Scheduled transfers etc - another piece of hygiene we’re aiming to get out with or close to multiple stashes so not long either.
- Asynchronous messaging also in the pipeline
As you point out, there are plenty of features, some of which some regard as ‘hygiene’ we didn’t launch with. The intention was to launch a beta not fully formed product and iterate with feedback as we go, which is what we’ve been doing. Starting from scratch, it wasn’t feasible to drop an entirely mature product in the market, when you’re also doing things like implementing the end to end core banking & payments systems and also getting the licence, all on limited funds. However, many neobanks (if you look back to where they started) did not launch with everything either, including missing hygiene features, if you go in detail backwards thru their roadmaps. Whilst we don’t have NPP yet, for example, we did launch with instant top up, whereas some only had bank transfer without NPP to start with.
If you compare us to others that started before us and have been adding features, yes they definitely have more. However it won’t take us that long to be on a par, plus to your point, we are developing a couple of things (as you can see on the roadmap) that we haven’t gone public about yet but will shortly and are not part of hygiene but more innovative .
Up is a great product - I use it often! They definitely have a good feature set (although confused by your listing instant provisioning - of apple pay and google pay? we’ve had that since we launched them?). As to their being a competitor, technically all banks are competitors to us, however I think the point being made was the fact that they’re part of another bank rather than being brand new (which is why it’s taken us longer than them to build ) and there may be advantages for the consumer for not going with an offering tied to an existing bank, although this would only play out over time. However, this is a growing space and there is room for more than one player. As to hoovering up the same audience, certainly there is overlap, however we’re not targeting in the same way and our plan is to go to a broader audience. Looking at our customer growth this week I’m very encouraged (and this is bank accounts - not just those after stash). Also, neobanks starting now have a long road ahead of them in terms of licence and core build so not sure they will be up and running that quickly. The majors have deep pockets and some great elements, but the experiences overall are still a bit dull and with their flaws, plus they have some big mountains to climb in terms of legacy systems and business as we’ve always said. I had to print out a form, sign it, scan it and post it to ING the other day (not one of the big 4 I know but a significant player).
I’d ask you to hold judgement for a few months. This will allow us to play catch up on some of the things you talk about, bring out an innovative product which our competitors don’t currently have, and then check out not just our list of features, as if it’s just that there will be no differentiation as everyone will copy these commodities, but the overall experience and service which is arguably where the edge will lie.
Thanks again!
