I can&#x27;t comment on the UK eco-system, but things are definitely more difficult in the US.<p>You first have to convince a prepaid provider to work with you. You&#x27;ll need runway for this. You then have to convince a bank to back your card program. For this you also need runway. And if you get through that and start developing, you are immediately on a clock since card program fees are substantial when they kick in.<p>Let&#x27;s say it takes you 6 months to get from scratch to launch and fees are waived up to that point. I&#x27;d guesstimate you now need a minimum of 25K retained users on your card program to cover costs. If you have a conversion rate of 5%, that means 500K downloads. And that&#x27;s before factoring in churn.<p>The PiggyBank team raised 100K. They were two people and iOS only. It is a stretch to think they could achieve all of this before running out of cash.<p>I am with Johnie and a few others - the lesson is to try something less ambitious first and use success there to raise money to build something more ambitious.