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This seems like the same poor journey traveled by so many of the tradtional banks with package banking - "same old; same old".  Monzo have a chance to rectfiy this.  Can they?  Will they?  Attracting accounts in banking is easy; creating sustainable profitability is far tougher.

Really? Banks have used note counting / sorting machines from long before ATMs in their cash centres.

The research does not seem to address the behavioural segmentation of people vis-vis managing their money.  Simplistically, people can be segmented based on lifestyle (spending / earning balance) and orientation to managing their money (careful v laissez faire).  It is this that tends to best explain financial outcomes.  The question which needs to be addressed is whether use of a PFM improves finanical outcomes.  As those who opt-in for using a PFM are almost certaintly behaviourally different from those who do not, it seems that this research is flawed in comparing the behaviour of two non-comparable groups.  A proper control test (before and after) is surely required to establish whether use of PFMs leads to better financial outcomes.

Ketharaman,  I largely agree, especially that customers are not confusd.  I am not sure that the big banks expected this to unfold any differently;  it has tended to be the consultants and suppliers who have talked up the speed of change - as they would!  Much of what has happened in the past few years has been a switch of balance, trans enquiries and simple payments from PCs / laptops as well as from branches, ATMs and contact centres to mobile, with some incremental volume due to mobile's convenience.   The switch of higher value banking activities (e.g. bank account opening, mortgages) to mobile is a long, slow and steady haul but we should not be surprised by this especially when we look at the speed of channel switching by customers over the last 50 years as banks have added channels.  It is common for consultants and suppliers to talk up the gold rush to win business and then when it does not happen as they predicted, propose that they help their customers to understand what they should do now that it is evident that the gold rush is not as predicted.  And after that they spot the next gold rush.

@Darmesh,  All the same people who currently don't use digital banking services and the myriad of wonderful tech capabilities in the market because they are not confident in them. A slick screen interface is great but not sufficient, particularly in banking, for much of the market.

Just because it is technically possible does not make it a winner, however easy and fast it is.  The key will be whether sufficient people will trust the brands involved and are sufficiently confident re the security of their banking details. 

Strongly agree;  it is also worth reflecting that, not so long ago, when cash was king, most commercial payments happened without bank intermediation, once the cash was withdrawn by the spending customer.  Being involved in processing each payment is a cost to banks (albeit increasingly small where it is 'straight through') not a revenue in many markets.