Digital challenger Monzo is to move card processing inhouse after a severe outage at its current third party service provider left customers high and dry for most of Sunday.
The problems started on Monday morning, when card processor GPS ran an "unexpected, large migration" that knocked out services for cardholders at Monzo and other fintech startups such as Curve, Revolut and Loot.
In a blog post, Monzo's head of engineering Oliver Beatties says using a third-party processor made a lot of sense when the startup first kicked off its alpha programme.
"Connecting directly to payment networks like MasterCard is a long, costly, and complex process, and at the time it didn’t seem like there would be any benefit to our customers from doing this," he says. "However, over the past year we have reassessed this decision; to ensure we have total control over the customer experience, we need to have a direct connection to payment networks."
He says the company has just finished a 12-month project to connect its systems directly to MasterCard in time for the launch of its current account later this year.
"We see ourselves as a technology company as much as a bank, and going forward our strategy is to bring all critical systems in-house and continue to develop our own platform atop modern technology which we control," he adds.