Monzo has unveiled Monzo Stand-in, a fully independent backup banking system designed to ensure customers can continue making payments, withdrawing cash, and transferring money even if the primary Monzo platform experiences an outage. The replica system operates separately, covering data, software, and infrastructure, and can be instantly activated when needed.
Banking outages have become a growing concern, with UK regulators and politicians pushing for better resilience in online financial services. Recent data from the UK Treasury Committee revealed that the top nine UK banks experienced a staggering 803 hours of downtime over the past two years. Notably, Barclays suffered a three-day outage that disrupted 56% of online payments, leading to compensation payouts between £5 million and £7.5 million.
Monzo Stand-in operates independently on Google Cloud Platform, while Monzo’s primary banking infrastructure runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS). If a major incident occurs, the backup platform seamlessly takes over, maintaining core banking services like spending, cash withdrawals, account balance checks, and card management.
The system debuted during an August 2024 outage that temporarily impacted Monzo’s payment processing and app functionality. The bank enabled Monzo Stand-in shortly after detecting the issue, minimizing customer disruptions.
A Monzo spokesperson highlighted the significance of the new system: “With Stand-in, we can continue to provide critical services to customers in the event of a severe platform outage—something that is becoming increasingly common in the banking industry. To our knowledge, we are the only bank that offers this level of backup.”
As online banking becomes the primary financial hub for millions, Monzo’s proactive approach in ensuring service continuity sets a new standard for resilience in the industry.