Good post! I didnāt know about this, but over here almost every bank account records a search on your credit record for opening anything - ordinary bank accounts, as well as credit cards. I suppose itās not so common over there, and from what I understand credit bureau data in general holds more weight over there so itās an important consideration.
I hadnāt heard of SoFi before, but they sound good.
(By the way, the idea of post-dated cheques to pay for something seems crazy to us, as cheques are not a guaranteed method of payment at all so there would always be a chance that they wouldnāt clear - people would be hesitant to accept them at all for this reason.)
Itās not quite that, but rather that there are usually separate files for basic banking and lending. A credit report, as operated by one of the major credit reporting agencies (Equifax/TransUnion/Experian) would normally only be searched when obtaining some kind of lending facility (credit card, loan, credit line). Normally, when you get a bank account, there are separate files pulled, administered by ChexSystems and Early Warning (which also operates Zelle, the P2P payment network I mentioned in the other post). These are usually checked for excessive inquiries (if youāve been opening ātoo manyā bank accounts, which may indicate to the bank that youāre up to something, or simply that youāve been bouncing from bank to bank for switching bribes, also not behavior they want to encourage) or derogatory notes (bank accounts gone into overdraft and then ignored, account closed due to fraudulent activity, like bad cheques presented or suspicions of money laundering). Schwab is pulling both credit and banking files even though youāre not getting any kind of lending facility from them (thereās been a hypothesis going around that it might be related to the margin lending facility on the brokerage account, but Iām pretty sure I asked to not have that when I opened my Schwab account and my credit report was hard-pulled anyway).
Theyāve been growing quite rapidly here in the US. They have a co-branded banking product with Samsung (Samsung Money by SoFi), theyāve acquired a company that specializes in ācard issuanceā and ādigital banking solutionsā called Galileo which actually says they count Monzo as one of their customers, and theyāve got a full suite of banking, lending (just launched a credit card, but they offered personal loans, student loans, and mortgages before that) and investing (both stocks and crypto) products. For people who canāt get approved for Schwab because of the credit pull requirement, itās a solid next best choice.
We have separate āfraud prevention agenciesā too, which are also checked and are different files, but generally all banks will submit your data to both credit reference and fraud prevention agencies to record an application and check it for āinconsistenciesā.
Thomas from the US team here (@melody we actually met at the NYC event with the āspecialā toiletā¦)
Firstly wow, this is an amazing review, thank you so much @melody for writing up such a comprehensive note!
2nd: youāre 100% right that we live for this type of feedback, so thank you for sharing it. Iāll use the opportunity to invite anyone else who wants to give their thoughts / opinions on our US product ā please donāt hesitate to reach out to me or leave your thoughts here or just write via in-app chat. We read all the messages, even if sometimes weāve not been as fast to respond as we should have been. Sorry about that.
3rd: Thanks for your kind words on our UI, pots (love your designs ) and on preferred names.
4th: Exciting news on cards coming soon! Cards with your name on (beautifully printed on the reverse) are coming soon ā look out for a blog soon, and notification in the app inviting you to confirm your address so we can post the new cards out. Of course this means the end of being called āMonzo Betaāā¦
5th: We also have noticed more badly formatted square transactions recently and have been looking into it ā hopefully a fix is coming soon.
And lastly, ā this year has been tough, as Iām sure it has for many people, but weāre definitely still committed to the US market. Your list of suggestions in terms of what we need to focus on feels along the right lines, and I hope that 2021 will see us much more actively back on this forum, and being more transparent with you our customers about future developments. In the meantime donāt hesitate to reach out!
i would say about 1/3 of the people i know in philly (who donāt have a job in tech) still have to physically go to a store to cash a paycheck. thereās a saying with food trucks that also applies to check cashing: the longer the line, the better (or in this case cheaper) it is. itās also kinda been a norm for me until i started meeting people from the tech industry tbh
Without wanting to sound condescending here at all, as I have no idea what age you are, but perhaps youāre showing your age, or I fraternised with some dodgy characters, and perhaps was one myself, as people used to do post dated cheques all the time back in the day. It wasnāt at all usual to say to someone āhereās the cheque, there wonāt be anything in there until Monday, so Iāve post dated it and if you can cash it after then it would be greatly appreciated,ā As you say, the date was more of a guide for the person you were giving it to than anything, but generally theyād rather take one dated next Tuesday than risk losing the sale of the second hand car or whatever, and of course would have more details on you so if it wasnāt honoured knew where you were to come round and break your legs have tea and cakes, but it certainly wasnāt an unusual thing to do in my circles in the 80s.
A week or two is a little different to taking a years worth sure, but I do actually remember landlords getting deposits by post dated cheques, theyād have a pile of them, one from each tenant and then assuming you left the place as is and werenāt behind on the rent would either just hand it back to you, or rip it up in front of you at the end, The 80s were a strange timeā¦
Youāre right - I am too young to remember the 80s. Of course, I was vaguely aware that cheques were previously used much more frequently, especially in shops, etc with the cheque guarantee card. I had also heard of post-dating cheques but apart from your landlord example, I didnāt think it was widely done. But as I say, I didnāt live through the time.
I suppose what I really meant was that the current US situation would be unthinkable in the modern day U.K. - when we all have online banking, etc.
Itās basically back to the 80s, in some respects.
My comments about acceptance were also meant to refer to the modern day; itās very difficult to get people to accept cheques now as the guarantee card has been killed off, the money doesnāt clear instantly and there are many other instantly-clearing options available.
@SebH Honestly I just wish there was consistency in Canada. While with some words using the British or American spelling (like Tire) is ubiquitous, for others it just depends on the person writing it (especially for words ending in ize/ise) and donāt get me started on the dates. I used to work as an insurance underwriter and brokers would send in a request to make changes on a certain effective date (or a DOB for a new customer) but youād have no idea if they wrote it was dd/mm/yy or mm/dd/yy.
Even the government canāt be consistent. On Alberta drivers abstracts one part would spell it Licence and another part would spell it as License on the same document.
Anarchist
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Licence is a noun, and License is a verb in the U.K. (usually). Maybe Albertans are speaking English English?
Yeah in this context It says Drivers Licence abstract at the top and then at the bottom itāll say Drivers License abstract date requested (and then list the date).
Honestly, one thing that Iām surprised about here in the US is that weāve never had a guarantee card system as far as I can remember. Youād think that a country so reliant on checks would at least try to make their use less of a leap of faith, but nope. You can individually have them certified, but a blanket āThis card means that any check I write up to X amount will be paid, for sureā would have made the prospect of accepting checks a lot less worrying.
Yeah, Iām currently in BC and itās kind of hard to wrap my head around. At least in the Vancouver area, though, itās mostly American spellings aside from certain words like cheque, expiry, and colour. Iām guessing this changes further east. Iāve also noticed that a lot of the time, dates seem to be written with letters for the month to avoid confusion (especially on product expiry dates).
@jamar0303 In Alberta its pretty much British spellings for everything except some words with ise/ize endings and tire. At least from my experience.
To be fair I donāt think most US merchants care if the cheque is good or not. Most are run through their merchant banks system and they take on the liability if the cheque bounces. The merchant gets their money either way. If you have bad chex report (kind of like a credit report for giving bad cheques), the merchantās processing system will bounce the cheque regardless of how much money you have in your account.
Backend engineer here - sorry about this! We shipped a bug fix on Nov 25 which should greatly improve this. It turns out we werenāt doing merchant enrichment for a bunch of common US transaction types that come through the Mastercard network - preauths, merchant credits etc Hopefully this should look much better now for new transactions going forward.
Thanks for writing such lovely (and useful!) feedback, weāre so lucky to have customers like you
I did want to ask, since Iāve also had some issues with āgeneric all caps unenhanceable transactionsā- will it be possible to fix past transactions, or should we only expect to see improvements with new transactions?
The cheques thing is interesting. Weāve lost the ability to say āthe cheques in the postā and thereby paying late to utilities etc. Direct debits has made it impossible to pay late. Is that a good thing(?)
Instant payment is probably a good thing at the low level (person to person) but unfortunately the big corporations donāt do it. They pay salaries once a month (Iām sure they would be happy with once a quarter). And they pay other business between 30 and 90 days which has 2 benefits for them - increase cash flow and earn extra interest. And yet we pay out instantly or on time.
Back to cheques, I also worked in Dubai (quite a few years ago) where you paid your rent with post-dated cheques and it was illegal to bounce a cheque. It was criminal offence- not sure if itās still like that. Just sayingā¦
The preferred name part of this product is something that sets itself apart from others and was a wow factor for meā¦ I work in the Credit Union space and our focus on DEI, specifically trans members is like a laser, however it can also be a laser once it hits a prism. Compliance, Operations, etc. can get in the way of simple things like eliminating dead naming due to ātax reportingā and other various things. For the card this also is a benefit of Mastercard loosening rules on the name on a card vs. Visa who is still pretty reluctant to move from ātraditionalā your-name-is-your-name type of attitude. For many this might seem like a small innovation but for those of us in the FI space in the US this is huge.
Still - Monzo with the small innovations that matter. Remote deposit and checks? Thatāll happen. But eliminating dead naming and the reminder of that in a daily experience? Incredible.
This is a great review, and really informed me more about my options if I choose to accept the invite when I get mine (on the waiting list currently). I praise you for word vomiting all over this thread! Thank you
Side note: I so want to be friends with you after reading this!
Thanks for your kind words on our UI, pots (love your designs 
) and on preferred names.
Hopefully this should look much better now for new transactions going forward.
