Crossrail is the 4th most costly 'megaproject' involving transport both under construction and 4th including all completed projects. There isn't any way to look at it where it isn't one of the world's largest construction projects unless you start looking at space stations and if cities were 'megaprojects'
It wasn't mentioned that it will cost 25 billion - which btw is a ridicilous high number in comparison to other tunnel projects.
Also for example the Gotthard base tunnel or the Brenner base tunnel are longer and therefor 'larger' then those described in the article.
Even looking at Gotthard tunnel is rather bad because it's just a tunnel though in very difficult conditions and large as you say is a bad comparison against a new railway network under a densely populated city.
Crossrail is large in the context it has new stations, depots, extensions, trains, and the very large amount of traffic it is expected to take under a very short construction period.
Looking at the entire picture doesn't make the number seem ridiculously high. If it seems to high you need to look at where it's all going its not just for a tunnel.
> On a per-unit sold basis, Tesla Model S is wildly profitable, with a gross margin north of 30% [1]. However, they are obviously still in startup mode, so they reinvest all of those earnings along with investor capital into improving the business.
They would still report a profit under this scenario.
If you ask the bank they'll let you use it. I's still in a sort of beta phase but all UK banks have to have them soon under a HM treasury directive on 'Open Banking'.
I like there's absolute no fees when using the debit card abroad and you get the exchange rate 'at cost'. There's a building society that does this but it needs 5k or 500 a month in deposits
I absolutely love that because I visit my family quite often and I'm usually ripped off with fees.
I heard about them when they were applying for their license and just felt lots of people would find it appealing. While it is making less money they save a lot too.
One thing that's quite nice about what they're doing, and rather profitable is the OD system.
With a credit card you have a seperate account, so when you get cash it doesn't have to pay off the card.
With mondo it is a debit card with a current account which can overdraft and interest rates near a credit card (19.9% according to their papers)
This means there's less risk for them and a smaller chance of NPLs as money needs to be paid off to the OD before the account is positive.
While a normal bank can take this view in the aggregate term of a customer's account it encourages the user to engage in more risk taking where the customer can't pay it back.
So you get less risk and the same interest rate.
That being said they do save a lot on software building it in house contrary to hiring someone external to do it for them. If Oracle's standard margin are any indication there's a lot lost this way in terms of cost.
> With mondo it is a debit card with a current account which can overdraft and interest rates near a credit card (19.9% according to their papers)
What's the advantage here? With my Smile account I have a Visa debit card linked to my current account, with an agreed interest free overdraft for a certain amount and then an additional overdraft on which I pay interest.
1) No fees using the card abroad. Exchange rate 'at cost'.
2) No fees using any ATM to withdraw cash (AKAIK when I asked the Mondo guys)
3) Instant notifications when you make a purchase and the ability to switch on and switch off the card. So you're never blocked when you purchase Christmas presents and weirdly spend more one week.
4) They have a nicer app that helps you track how you're spending and your habits are changing. They've even managed to put in logos for each merchant. I know that's hard because I've done it for my startup -(for example a mom and pop pharmacy)
5) Easy integration into transferwise and other apps where you can get loans from banks in a marketplace so you get the best deal. In general there's a whole lot of benefits to the APIification mondo offers. It avoids doing what everyone does by just sending you off and integrating with others who do something better.. Credit Cards? Loans? FX transfers. While I don't know the details this is what I got from their marketplace vision.
6) Sign up using something like Jumio, or Jumio? (Not sure i don't have Mondo, wish I did- so if you're reading this give it to me!) so it takes 30 seconds and no need to visit a branch.
Ultimately its your choice but they have a pretty cool thing they're building.
I might want to point out I have nothing to do with Mondo. I love their idea but the way you asked that question suggests I may be implying that, but I don't have anything to do with them.
I got stuck on their annoying typeform. I was on my mobile and agree wasn't clicking properly it kept going back. Then I was too late. So.. it could be worse!
This is hardly true. The UK is one of the only countries which has a couple of simple features in banking no other country has:
- Instant, Free transfers, including from one bank to another. Even on weekends & holidays.
- APIs currently available (under the UK open banking government guidelines)
- Pay to mobile phones (not that cool).
- Debit via a Debit Card out of the Mastercard network (costs something like 6p per transaction or something, not sure of the details but there's no fixed fee)
There are also a couple of other things like their fraud systems in how you can unblock your card without having to call customer sevice. Granted its an annoying robocall.
Some customers also have authentication by voice from recordings via customer service calls.
All this is in addition to what everyone else has we take for granted: Pinsentry, NFC, Chip and Pin.
The list is quite long, but I hardly think the UK banks aren't innovators. By any measure they're doing a good job.
Also check out Barclay's accelerator where they lend out their banking license to startups.
> What remains to be seen is whether Mondo will make money in the way a traditional bank does.
If their £1m in debit card spending is anything to go by they already have roughly £15k in the bank from Acq Bank revenue from Mastercard. This is just in alpha in 3 months with 200? users.
I did not say they were not innovative at all. I said they were slow to innovate. This is being proven by the speed at which fintech startups are unbundling banking services into individual products.
Zopa, Nutmeg, Transferwise could have been built by banks. But they were not.
> Instant, Free transfers, including from one bank to another. Even on weekends & holidays.
- Paypal in 1999?
> APIs currently available (under the UK open banking government guidelines)
Yodlee supplies APIs already.
> they already have roughly £15k in the bank from Acq Bank revenue from Mastercard.
Really? Mondo are currently paying for the prepaid cards, and more to load them through the app. This is probably around 2% ? So 20k cost for this? Maybe I am wrong, but I can't see how else the card gets loaded by a free payment.
You are right, the barclays accelerator is great. And similar incubators and schemes are opening up.
I still think it's pretty clear that innovation is coming from the outside.
Whaaa? The paypal-to-paypal part is instant. Getting the money into a US bank account usually is not. It's still the case in the US that there is no easy and reliable way to instantly get money that's in your account to appear in your friend's account. (There are some instant transfer services, but they don't work between any two US bank accounts.)
Didn't know they were free in 1999. It doesn't look like banks will start charging for transfers though, it's certainly not free to get customers. It can also be withdrawn as cash immediately as its received ;), even today Paypal takes a bit of time to withdraw outside of the UK.
> Nutmeg
Not easy to do as it has to be a seperate entity. Im working on a startup like Nutmeg. Also the 2008 landscape changes in what Banks want to be makes them avoid this space. Investments are a bit investment bankingey for the ordinary person.
> Transferwise
These eat into their margins, why would they do that? They already have customers willing to pay more. Transferwise can't get everyone as an audience that most banks serve, though it will get some of them.
> Zopa
Banks are apparently participating in these marketplaces. Granted they haven't created any marketplaces, though.
> Yodlee supplies APIs already
The bank's API allows transfers, takes 1 second and doesn't need a username or password. No need for those token things either. Yodlee's big problem is they screen scrape (or use the banking api the bank provides which you can get without paying) and it can take up to 5 mins to do this.
They use OAuth so its like the 'login with facebook' type authentication where the authentication is delegated back to the bank.
Banks do innovate but they're interested in things that improve banking and focusing on that. They're not interested in the old pre 2008 model of banking.
Yeah thinking about the 1.5% fee thing they probably don't have that because its routed through Wirecard (German firm) and they've just put mondo branding on it.
I hardly think the banks are slow. I've lived in Australia, South Africa & Canada. By any measure the UK banks (except a few) are really quick in adapting to change. If ours are slow the ones there are Glacial.
I guess if you look at Fintech in breadth, the big players aren't interested in doing everything, just a handful of small things really well and very profitably. It's a bit harsh to say they're not doing enough faster by judging them against non banking startups.
I guess it seems like alot of these services are unbundling banks but it's just a handful like Transferwise. The 'core' banking features are hard to unbundle. I guess P2P lending is sort of a unbundle in a way but its at a different vertical.
To put it another way I guess: What are UK banks missing that is available elsewhere that would improve banking services (besides customer support), or even more generally?
They won't have a single branch either, unlike these others (or their parents). Apart from Atom they're the only ones like this.
Monese and FFREES aren't even banks by definition either.
I've been following Mondo for ages the only true bank like it is Atom & Starling. Starling isn't exactly in the same category though. Someone made a graphic to show the differences. Not sure if I can find that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transport_megaprojects