App-only bank Mondo is changing its name next week

Tom Blomfield, CEO and founder Mondo

App-only startup bank Mondo is announcing its new name next Thursday, over 2 months after admitting it had to change due to a legal dispute.

Mondo announced in early June that it needed to change its name following a trademark dispute and asked customers to suggest new names, as long as they began with M.

CEO Tom Blomfield told Business Insider at the time: "As with everything we do, we're going to try and involve the community. We're going to solicit a bunch of names and hopefully we won't end up as Banky McBankface. It won't be a pure vote. We're going out soliciting ideas and then we'll take it through our own internal process."

Mondo confirmed to BI that it will announce its new name next Thursday at a live event held at 7 p.m. BST (2 p.m. ET) its offices in Shoreditch, East London. The event will be live streamed on YouTube, with updates on Twitter too.

A spokesperson for Mondo told BI:

"In under 48 hours they received over 12,500 submissions, and 4,000 unique suggestions, which they then painstakingly searched through, looking for a name that would work (and that wasn’t already taken!).

"Having worked closely with a team of trademark lawyers over the last few weeks, Mondo are now confident their new name is good to go.

"Five members of the public suggested the new name - and the team immediately loved it. Some of those who sent in suggestions will be there to see the announcement on Thursday."

Mondo is one of several so-called "neobanks" — app-only, startup banks. Rivals include Tandem, Atom, and Starling. Mondo currently only issues pre-paid cards that have money loaded onto them through the app rather than debit cards.

But since announcing the name change process Mondo has won a restricted banking licence, meaning it can hold customer money and issue proper accounts. The startup, launched last February, will have to raise at least £15 million ($19.7 million) to have its restrictions lifted.

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