Monzo has temporarily frozen some customer accounts in order to carry out additional identity verification checks, due to new European money laundering regulations.

Monzo explained that its customers are currently on one of three levels of identity verification – standard, full or enhanced. Each of these levels corresponds to different payment and withdrawal limits on your Monzo account, ranging from a maximum held balance of £2,000 to £10,000.

The new Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017, which comes as part of the EU 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive, means that the challenger bank can no longer offer its base level of verification – standard.

As a result, Monzo is asking all customers on this level to complete the identity verification process to move them up to the next level. This affects around 20,000 customers, all of whom will receive a push notification through their app. Users must take a photo of their ID (passport or driving licence ideally) and record a 5 second video of themselves to complete the process.

The bank said: “As well as having access to higher transaction and withdrawal limits, the additional benefit of going through identity verification now is it should mean you don’t need to do it again when you switch to a current account later this year.”

Monzo also recently announced that more than a quarter of a billion pounds has been spent through its Monzo cards by more than 200,000 customers.

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