MONZO CUSTOMERS SPEND £14,100 ON BAYEUX TAPESTRY TICKETS

Monzo customers spent £14,100 on Bayeux Tapestry tickets in the first hour of the British Museum’s latest release, the bank said. Sales opened at 10am on Wednesday, when thousands of people joined an online queue. Monzo said payments to the museum were 48 times higher than on a normal Wednesday morning. The latest batch sold out within three hours, compared with 24 hours for the first batch.

The exhibition in London displays the 1,000-year-old embroidery recording the Norman Conquest. It is the tapestry’s first display in England since it was taken to France in the 11th century. Standard adult tickets cost £33 at peak times and £27 off-peak. Monzo said 55% of buyers in the first hour were under 35, while almost half of purchasers lived outside London. Its figures placed the most distant purchases in Glasgow.

Monzo said its customers had spent £30,500 within two hours of the release. The bank, which has 16 million customers, put first-hour spending above the £7,000 it recorded for the opening morning of The Odyssey and the £6,300 for Spider-Man: Brand New Day. It said buyers spent £97 on average at the museum checkout, compared with £19 for Spider-Man. The British Museum described the response to the display as “extraordinary”. It has barred photography to help manage queues.