16 and 17 Year Old Accounts - choose your Monzo.me name for free

[andrewpclark (Andy)]

My son turned 16 yesterday so by 8am he had his new Monzo account created and I suspect the card will arrive today or tomorrow. Taking him through the features last night he’s now set up a savings account and he thought that being able to get money back from mates was a cool feature.

One little thing that might be nice for this younger group is to set up their monzo.me special links for free. Monzo.me is one of the infectious elements of Monzo (messaging type apps always are). So, if he could choose StrangerThings123 or FutureRocketScientist as his Monzo.me he might just try and connect with his mates in this sort of way. Makes them feel a bit special and just costs a little bit of support engineer time.

Also, stickers for 16 year olds!

[Ordog]

Custom monzo.me links used to be free to change but then were added as a Plus feature. I guess this is where they will remain for the next version too

They were quite strict with some of the choices too if I remember correctly to minimise misuse and fraud.

[gmclean]

Great idea! Hopefully Monzo.me isn’t currently locked into the new Plus/Premium platform and could be opened up for this suggestion.

[anon99225098]

Don’t you just love it when companies paywall features to turn a quick quid?

If I recall they actually blocked preferred names too, so Nicholas can’t become Nick without paying

[phildawson (Sorry, I will have to escalate this.)]

@Ordog

They were quite strict with some of the choices too if I remember correctly to minimise misuse and fraud.

Indeed it had to be fairly close to your name.

If you pay for Plus does that mean you can commit fraud easier by having a custom name?

monzo.me/WeathlyPrinceNeedingToGetMoneyOutOfTheirCountry

If you’re paying to access a feature thats still setting it close to your real name its like .

[j06 (Jamie)]

@anon99225098

Don’t you just love it when companies paywall features to turn a quick quid?

Well, to be fair the point of Monzo is to make money. If you don’t think it’s a fair price no one is forcing you to pay.

[Ordog]

@phildawson

Indeed it had to be fairly close to your name.

If you pay for Plus does that mean you can commit fraud easier by having a custom name?

Well that was the rule but people were reporting inconsistencies. I know someone got Monzo.me – Pay Daniel instantly with Monzo.me for example.

I can understand why some of the OPs suggestions might be declined like strangerthings, or if someone wanted /google. Monzo did comment that it’s just safer for everyone all around if it resembles the name of the account holder, which makes sense

[phildawson (Sorry, I will have to escalate this.)]

Hmm there’s seems to be a bit of inconsistency in the policy. Looks like they got it under the Plus, not previous to the change.

I wonder what sweetened the deal.

Monzo Plus - here's what's coming next!

I don’t see why it would be rejected for being too short. Think it will just be another case of confusion like when someone wanted /batman. You could always go for Monzo.me – Send money instantly through a link too That belongs to @Dannytc

Monzo Plus - what would you like to see?

On a lighter note, my kitten likes the blue. [BlurImage_27-4-2019-4-22-16] I managed to request monzo.me/1 And lastly the app looks good all in matching blue. [BlurImage_27-4-2019-4-24-31] Let’s just see where monzo plus grows to…

[Ordog]

The whole thing was really messy, from reading a reply on here earlier today it reminded me how some people got swag and others got nothing. I’m so confused

[Feathers (MikeF)]

The only limit I remember on Plus was that it not be offensive.

[Rat_au_van (Em)]

Or potentially misleading eg someone else’s name or closely resembling a business name

[anon99225098]

@j06

Well, to be fair the point of Monzo is to make money.

I agree entirely - but don’t introduce something and then paywall it later. At least voice intentions to paywall it before releasing it as free, so people don’t have a feature taken from them and commercialised. That’s how you grow dissent

[j06 (Jamie)]

So I was a Monzo customer when monzo.me links were introduced, when customer numbers were in their thousands, not millions. They were changeable for only a very short amount of time, really whilst Monzo scrambled to settle on a policy around whether or not you should be allowed to change it at all. Relatively few were successful at changing the link as a result of some COps allowing the change whilst other COps refused. A lot of changes were actually quickly reversed, and if any changes were allowed they were simple changes like removing the middle name only: pauljohnsmith would become paulsmith and robertbaker2 would become robbaker and so on. No one was allowed superman or similar then, and very quickly no changes were allowed at all. It really wasn’t a case of wholesale changes for all and then “let’s monetise this cash cow, baby!”

On a general level I have no problem with something that was free becoming paid–for. Every company needs to make money and why shouldn’t it charge for a popular service? Profit is profit and every business will take easy profit over complex. Yes, some people will subsequently choose not to take the service because of the new fee, but that’s the customer’s prerogative. I myself have stopped using my account because of elements of the whole Plus debacle but Monzo will take any loss of business into account and adjust its policies accordingly. It doesn’t mean I have any ill will towards Monzo’s decision making, it just means it’s not for me at this time.

At the end of the day, Monzo is a business and you need to decide if it’s worth your custom, but folk do need to get over being offended at decisions Monzo makes which they don’t agree with.