Abstract

Monzo is a new, digital bank based in the UK with a full banking licence. With our own technology, we are building a retail current account in-house, from the ground up. We strive to provide the best user experience and security for our customers, whilst abstracting away any complexity. Transparency is also important to us – we hope to share information and data about the financial crime we see in the wild and the security trade-offs we are making.

We will present a series of short lightning talks to give an overview of the challenges we are facing whilst building a bank. This will be followed by an informal Q&A.

• Secret storage: banking requires a number of keys which must simultaneously be available to production systems and stored securely.
• PIN delivery: end-to-end encryption to the customer’s device can provide a secure delivery mechanism for PINs.
• Fighting financial crime: regulation provides a starting point for combating financial crime – in addition to this we use real-world data to develop effective countermeasures.