Monzo continued to lose market share among digital banking rivals in 2020

As the UK adopts digital banking, early leader Monzo is losing market share to rivals including Starling Bank,Curve,Bunq and Revolut, according to figures from Apptopia obtained by AltFi.

Monzo controlled over 50 per cent of the admittedly far smaller market for digital banking apps back in early 2019 with around 3m customers.

Today the bank has over 5m customers, but as a sign of just how large the market is becoming, this accounts for just over 38 per cent of monthly active users.

Another huge change last year was the departure of N26 from the UK in early 2020, a move that saw its nascent 6 per cent market share from 2019 more than halved to just 2.6 per cent across the course of the year.

While a fall in market share doesn’t necessarily mean a fall in customers, in N26’s case, its UK customer base rapidly trended to zero in 2020 as it closed its remaining accounts.

But Monzo and N26’s losses were others’ gains, and Starling Bank was the largest beneficiary, with its market share jumping by nearly five percentage points to over 18 per cent in 2020.

Infogram

Apptopia’s monthly active user data comes from usage among a sample of users that it tracks, and this data is comparing market share among users of the fintech apps listed above—obviously traditional high street banks had a bumper 2020 when it comes to digital banking, but we don’t have that data.

Other gains among digital banking apps were seen by Curve (market share rising from 3.68 per cent to 5.61 per cent), Tide (3.59 per cent to 4.96 per cent) and Revolut (15.25 per cent to 15.81 per cent).

Want more insight and data on the state of digital banking? Download AltFi's free Digital Banking State Of The Market Report today.

UPDATE 17-03-2021 - Headline updated to reflect that Monzo's market share is changing among its digital banking peers, the bank's absolute customer base continued to grow throughout 2020.