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With finance moving increasingly online, we are seeing innovations offering seamless digital alternatives to physical banking. British startup Mondo has created a mobile-first banking service, which sees an app working in conjunction with a debit card to help users manage their finances.

Users first load money into their account and spend it with their Mondo card. The app then gives them a running spending total, and users are able to interact with individual transactions, browsing by the names of businesses, and see how much a week they are spending at, for example, Starbucks. They can also browse by category, and find out how much money goes into ‘entertainment’ or ‘eating out’ a month.

A dashboard will notify users the number of days until their next pay day, and estimate an amount that is “safe to spend”. Catering to millennial users, it enables P2P payments via emoji. The app will notify users of bills that come out of their account, and check if they are higher than usual. There is also the option to add extra details, such as photos of receipts for expenses. What’s more, the app is able to bypasses traditional problems with banks such as having credit cards blocked when traveling to foreign countries.

Mondo doesn’t currently have a full banking license, but its Alpha stage has been rolled out to several thousand trial customers and has been used to pay for services in more than 50 countries. The startup will be launching a crowdfunding campaign, and opening up to receive input from its users and early adopters in March. The company has received several million of investment from funding rounds, and is looking for GBP 1 million from smaller investors to join their backers.

Are these functions bigger banks should be introducing themselves?