Monzo Moves Faster Payments Connection In-House

UK challenger bank Monzo announced on Wednesday it has moved its Faster Payments connection in-house. The digital banking group revealed that the decision to shift in-house was due to the problems making and receiving bank transfers last May. Monzo reported:

“At the time of the incident, we relied on a third party provider to operate the component which connects Monzo to the UK bank transfer network. This component is known as the gateway. As an outcome of the incident, we promised you that we’d build our own gateway within our internal systems. We recognise that operating our own infrastructure and systems is the key to reliability, and we needed to establish more specialised expertise into Monzo.”

Monzo further noted that its in-house gateway has been running since November 2019. In regards to why it was originally using a third party, Monzo explained that it chose to use third party three years ago as it allowed it to offer banking transfer to customers quickly. The bank added:

“By using a third party, we could get complex components of the gateway abstracted away and managed for us. Such components included specific cryptographic requirements and stand-in functionality, which our small team at the time didn’t have much experience building.”

The launch of the in-house service comes after Monzo reportedly appointed David Laramy as its new Vice President and Head of Global Financial Crime Division. Laramy’s appointment has come shortly after the banking challenger appointed former American Express executive Sujata Bhatia as its new COO.