UK’s digital bank Monzo noted that their engineering team has created Monzo Stand-in, which is described as a fully independent backup bank complete with its own data, software, and infrastructure.
This system can reportedly become effective / go live instantly during outages, ensuring customers retain access to essential services like payments, cash withdrawals, card freezing, and bank transfers—even if the main Monzo app is not functioning properly.
As online banking grows, service disruptions have caught the attention of regulators and lawmakers.
The UK Government Treasury Committee recently reported that nine major UK banking institutions and building societies racked up at least 803 hours—over 33 days—of tech outages in the past two years.
A stark example came during Barclays’ three-day outage, where 56% of online payments failed due to a major slump in mainframe performance.
The bank anticipates shelling out £5 million to £7.5 million in compensation for customer inconvenience.
Earlier this year, payment issues also hit UK banks like TSB, Bank of Scotland, Nationwide Building Society, Halifax, Lloyds, and First Direct, underscoring the industry-wide challenge.
Monzo Stand-in operates as a standalone system on Google Cloud Platform, ready to step in for the bank’s primary Amazon Web Services (AWS)-based platform during a crisis.
It supports critical functions: card spending, cash withdrawals, bank transfers, balance checks, transaction viewing, and card management.
The Monzo app quietly checks for Stand-in activation in the background, switching to a streamlined interface if needed to keep key features accessible.
A Monzo spokesperson said:
“With Stand-in, we’re ensuring our customers can rely on critical services during a major outage—a growing issue across banking. Recent disruptions have shown how much customers suffer when they can’t access their funds. As far as we know, no other bank offers a solution like this.”
The backup system reportedly proved its worth in August 2024, when a significant platform failure impacted Monzo, disrupting payment processing and app access.
The bank noted:
“The outage lasted about an hour, but we activated Stand-in quickly after spotting the issue, keeping our customers’ money usable.”