Amazon Partnership

Actually, what you’ve said here is nonsense… America has a corporation tax of 35%, one of the highest in the world, which is why countries AVOID repatriating profits to America (Apple have more than $200bn off-shore).

Amazon do not do this though, Amazon simply re-invest nearly all of their profit and since corporation tax is only levied on profit they pay barely any corporation tax.

What you (and presumably the article) are referring to is their previous attitude towards VAT, whereby they fulfilled sales from Luxembourg to avoid paying the higher British VAT rate. Whilst this is partially true, it doesn’t actually make Amazon any money per se, VAT is a tax levied on the consumer through higher prices. Dodging VAT allows you to sell more (as you can be cheaper) but it doesn’t allow you to keep any money as any VAT collected is always passed onto the government.

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What @tommy5dollar said may have been correct sometime in the past but they have been reporting profits for at least two years. I should also acknowledge that they are now allegedly trading in the UK with a UK taxable entity so may be on their way to paying U.K. taxes. However I don’t regard them as a wholesome company avoid buying anything from except as a last resort.

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I’d like to see similar consumer protection to credit card usage, so in the event of a dispute the Monzo card is immediately reimbursed (your customers will, after all, be honest) whilst the dispute is settled.

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Would like to see additional info too - maybe a link to what you purchased

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Well, I disagree. Since this an ideas forum I think it is quite important to put this on the table first thing. Then, as a community we can give our opinions, but as the bank i expect to use my future daily banking I expect Monzo to put my privacy as priority number 1 in any partnership… and I’m sure I am not the only one with this expectation.

I completely agree that this is important.

What I’m hoping this thread doesn’t turn into is “what if Amazon do x, y, z with my data?” which would be a waste of time if they don’t ask for it or do those things & instead, if users have concerns they can ask Monzo to “ensure that they’re protected against x, y, z” because they’re worried about “…”

The difference is that, that keeps the conversation constructive, which means that it gives Monzo ideas that they can act upon. Of course, if anyone would prefer to simply complain in advance anyway then go ahead :slight_smile:

Ultimately I’m not worried because I trust Monzo take good care of my data, see this post & this one, for example but I appreciate the fact that others might not be so confident.

Similar to others, for me it would be richer transactional information. So each Amazon entry in Monzo would pull the order info so I can see exactly what it is (instead of currently having to check Amazon and then make a note on each entry). It would also be great if each entry provided a direct link to the tracking information for an order.

The predictive stuff for any pre-orders or Prime subscription, Subscribe and Save etc for budgeting / forecast purposes would also be really great from a money management point of view.

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Sorry if someone has already posted, but how about an Alexa app? It would be useful to learn your balance by asking Alexa and as and when new services come on-line, they can also be added. “Alexa, pay Barclaycard £150” etc.

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Item level transaction data would be cool - they currently have something like this with HSBC and Amazon business: https://www.amazon.co.uk/b2b/info/visa?layout=landing -

Being able to see how much I spend on under certain categories (books, computer equipment, random stuff etc. ) from Amazon would also be quite an eye opener

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That would be amazing but it is only for Visa cards and not Mastercards, also only for business accounts not personal accounts :frowning:

@yas that would be an amazing integration. Big win for Monzo if they can get that for ordinary proles like us.

One thing that would help me out would be automatic charging in the local currency. I order from pretty much all the amazon sites (I’m a big movie buff, and some films are only available in certain countries, or one country has a great special edition whilst the UK version is awful etc.) and amazon asks you to set the default currency of your card. This means I have to go in and change the default for every transaction to make sure I’m able to take advantage of the perfect exchange rate on Monzo every time. This also means I can’t pre-order things on my Monzo card as amazon updates the default currency on all orders whenever you change it on one.
If amazon could recognise it was a Monzo card and always charge the local currency, regardless if I was ordering from .co.jp, .com, or .es that would certainly make it easier for me!

Other than that I’d echo (see what I did there) there ideas here, Alexa skills, breakdown of items in transactions, knowing how much you had pre-ordered or, say, being charged in the next 14 days or something like that, would be useful.

I’m a prime member and a big amazon user, so really happy to see integration. I know plenty of people have issues with amazon for tax reasons (which I don’t have a problem with, if you don’t like the tax laws lobby to change the tax laws, not to have amazon donate money they don’t have to which can’t actually happen because their shareholders have the right to sue them if they’re not taking best advantage of all the tax laws) and worker’s rights reasons (a much better reason to dislike them, it does sound like it sucks to work in their warehouse) but ultimately they’re one of the biggest names in the world and integrating with them shows that Monzo is a real part of the marketplace now. Much like people demand Netflix integration on their TVs and Spotify apps for their phones (both of which see a tiny amount of revenue going to creators compared with other distribution models) trying to avoid the behemoths of the marketplace just makes you a worse choice for most consumers.

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To clarify, are you saying that unless you change an order so that you’re charged in local currency, Amazon does the conversion for you so you’re charged in GBP but using an exchange rate that they’ve applied (& is worse than the rate that Monzo offers)?

Hmm, I thought it was possible to disable Amazon Currency converter. I’m a fairly noob Amazon customer, so I never really had to try it out, but wouldn’t it be exactly what you want?

I had similar issue with Paypal, but I was able to disable paypal’s currency conversion for Monzo card and now paypal 99% of the times charges me in whatever currency I have to pay. That 1% are bugs or weird integrations, also not always Paypal’s fault.

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When you order it asks what currency your card is in, it then uses that data across all amazon sites the next time it processes any transaction. So I could order something from .com and set it to USD but then forget that a month ago I pre-ordered something from .es so when that processes amazon charge my card in USD converted from EUR at their own rate.
What this means practically is that I only order something that can ship immediately, and don’t use my Monzo card for any of my UK pre-orders (of which there are many) in case I’ve just changed the card to USD for an American order and not remembered to switch it back.

I had similar but went in settings to toggle the currency conversion on/off

I’m not sure if you can do that, but that would only be what you want if you were only ever paying with Monzo. Sometimes when I’m light on cash I’ll use a credit card, and amazon’s own conversion usually beats my credit card’s, so then I’d be going in a playing with settings to allow me to turn conversion on and off, so just swapping problems.

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Itemised transactions please

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Have you guys seen this article (http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/16/amazon-is-buying-whole-foods-in-a-deal-valued-at-13-point-7-billion.html)? Amazon is buying Whole Foods! I guess it only applies to America but I’ve bought groceries off amazon before (mostly world foods/seasonings etc), maybe there could be some sort of Alexa integration for recurring grocery purchases? Or a reminder to pick up more food/drinks if you’ve not done in awhile?

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Here are the latest figures: