A new bank is a rare thing in the UK, and then even when one does launch, it's usually a hidden subsidiary of one of the big five.
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| "Give me all your money" |
This is what made Metro Bank such an interesting proposition. Offering simple banking, they promise to do away with "stupid bank rules" and to "surprise and delight every customer" - so I thought I'd give them a try.
The first thing to mention is that, at the moment, they're only in London, so to open an account you have to visit one of their branches (or "stores", as they'd like you to call them) in the capital. It's also worth mentioning that they're nothing to do with the Metro Bank in Pennsylvania, even though they have the same logo, same founder (the guy on the right with the dog), and the same name.
I turn up to their branch on Tottenham Court Road, and wait for someone to become available to open me an account. I end up speaking to the branch manager, and he's very helpful. He answers all my questions, sorts me out with everything I need to know, takes my photo for security, and even prints and embosses my new debit card there and then. All in all, the process took about an hour. I left very happy. Even tried my debit card in a Barclays cash point that night, and it worked a treat.
The branch (sorry, store) is very swish. Blue and red neons everywhere, marble floor, and a counter with no security barriers, all makes for a very open and welcoming feel. I got the feeling that they also hired based on attractiveness - in particular one of the girls working there, who seemed to take great pleasure in constantly walking past with her slightly-too-short miniskirt and slightly-too-high stilettos, bending over almost on purpose to pick every single item up out of the bottom drawers of various desks. Maybe that's the "surprise and delight every customer" portion of their manifesto.
However, that's where the surprise and delight seems to have dried up. Their internet banking service is very simplistic. Not in the "easy to use" kind of way, but in the "lacking something" kind of way. (Although I've just found that you can't cancel Direct Debits online, you have to phone their call centre to do that). I can't quite put my finger on it, but it feels very Tonka Toy-esque. Maybe it's the multiple exclamation marks that pop up with error messages, or the fact that even the simplest of navigation requires a set of big image buttons. It kind of goes hand in hand with the look of the debit card - a huge logo in blue and red, big red magnetic stripe on the back, and the silver printing on the numbers a couple of millimeters to the right of where they're actually embossed.
It also feels that Metro has been left "out of the loop" by the other banks, in terms of the Faster Payments service. Metro claims they participate in the scheme, as does the CanIPayFaster website, but incoming payments from other banks seem to take a good few hours to actually credit to the account. Out of business hours, they seem to wait until the following morning to credit them - so if you're moving money in the evenings, you might find your cash in limbo for the best part of a day. Outgoing payments seem to be hit and miss - sometimes they go instantly, sometimes they seem to wait for an hour or two.
In summary, it's not that Metro has done anything wrong, in fact I still look forward to using them, but I don't know if I could switch to making them my main bank just yet. The overall service just feels a bit too rough around the edges, a bit too clunky for the demanding 21st century consumer.
