Monzo’s Business Banking Account Offering Goes Live

U.K. challenger bank Monzo has launched business bank accounts this week after a year-long trial period in which 2,500 customers got early access, according to a TechCrunch report.

There will be two options aimed at small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs): a free account and a paid premium account which costs 5 pounds ($6.06) per month.

The free account, called Business Lite, will have similar features to the regular Monzo accounts, along with providing web access and mobile banking from an app.

The paid account, called Business Pro, will offer a variety of services like Tax Pots, which lets businesses set aside some inbound payments to go toward future tax bills. There will also be invoicing tools within the app and the ability to have multiple user accounts on the same app. Users will also be able to integrate with third-party software.

Co-Founder and CEO Tom Blomfield said charging the fee for premium account with more features made sense because they cost more to build, but not every business needs them.

Blomfield said the funds saved on things like bookkeeping with the Tax Pots feature and other Monzo integration features would make up for the small fee.

Blomfield acknowledged the bank had “tried to do too many things at once” without taking into account how popular their bank had become — it was named No. 1 brand in the U.K. by YouGov last year. So, with the new accounts, Blomfield said the bank tried harder to make them polished.

Blomefield said the long trial period had educated the company on what would be popular. Instant notifications, which could let freelancers know a client has paid them, were useful. And web access ended up being more important than the Monzo team thought it would be, so that’s why the company invested in a web portal for business accounts.