UK banking startup Monzo has officially become a fully authorised digital bank, after having restrictions placed on it, by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), lifted.

The decision means that Monzo’s initial aim of ‘building a current account that lives on your smartphone and gives you control of your money’ can now become a reality. However, Monzo says it will be introduce current accounts ‘quite slowly’ to avoid any problems.

“We’re currently running live bank accounts with a small group of users, and we’ll slowly be expanding that group over the coming months to put our banking system through its paces and ensure everything works as expected,” said Tom Blomfield, Monzo CEO, in a blog post. “As we get used to running current accounts day-to-day, we’ll look to offer accounts to larger numbers of people over the summer, including groups like our recent investors and pre-registrants from the crowdfunding.”

Prior to the lifting of restrictions by the FCA and PRA, users had to have an external bank account connected to Monzo’s app to gain use of its prepaid card and other features.