Monzo Business Customer Base Exceeds 500K

British neo-bank Monzo says it now has more than 500,000 business customers.

And with that milestone, the company announced Wednesday (Oct. 16) a new plan for “bigger small businesses” called Team, designed to give business owners more control over their financial management with less expense administration. 

TS Anil, Monzo’s CEO, said in a news release that England’s small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have historically been overlooked by banks.

“Business owners need game-changing products that take away unnecessary paperwork and allow them to get on with the important task of growing their business,” Anil said.

“As we scale beyond 500,000 business customers we’re still as focused on staying close to our business community as we’ve always been and building features that do the heavy lifting as they focus on what really matters to them. Team is the next step in this journey, with plenty more to come.”

Among the offerings involved in Team are expense cards, the ability for businesses to have up to 15 staff members on their accounts, and a bulk payments tool for approving multiple payments in a single step.

The plan is open to new business customers, though existing business customers can upgrade their subscriptions to Team on Monzo’s app, the release said.

The announcement comes a little more than two months after Monzo announced it had surpassed 10 million personal customers, and several weeks after the neobank revealed that it had reached its first profitable year.

The news comes as SMBs are increasingly expecting their banks to provide better digital experiences, as PYMNTS wrote earlier this month.

“Eighty percent of small business owners say that having world-class, digital capabilities is extremely important and, frankly, expected from their bank,” Adam Hughes, CEO of Amount, told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster, arguing that when small businesses begin to search for the right lending experience, digital is “table stakes at this point.”

This expectation among SMBs is driven not only by convenience and fast access to credit, but also by the need for financial tools such as deposits. However, today’s small business banking landscape is fragmented, with many lenders coming up short in meeting these expectations.

“Some of the biggest banks in the country are taking weeks to fund a small business client,” Hughes said, pointing to the challenges of manual, paper-intensive processes.