Having now seen someone ask for it, it seems like such a sensible thing to do, that I’m a bit surprised it hasn’t already been done.
Monzo know when a new direct debit instruction gets set up, and they already show you in the app (maybe notify you as well?). This idea of having a flow in app to confirm or reject a new instruction would be a wonderful quality of life improvement, especially for business accounts, where this is a pretty common occurrence.
Having a preset to automatically reject new instructions unless you allow them would be a nice bonus too.
Great idea, but I wonder how much this would cause problems for the DD originators, with people cancelling DDs because they have buyers remorse, or just can’t remember setting it up, even though they’re still contractually obliged to make the payments.
Yes, I know people can just cancel any DD, but this might provoke an immediate ‘out’ without having to really consider the consequences?
Yeah I get the security aspect of this. However I do appreciate how Monzo do inform us of a direct debit being set up and on how much it’s set up for - even when direct debit amounts change, Monzo let us know in the app which no other bank does until the payment goes out.
I know this. It’s plainly obvious. But any change that Monzo might unilaterally put in place, could cause a lot of extra work for other organisations. It was just an observation.
Monzo already has a legacy problem with card acceptance on some airlines because of the way it changed traditional norms of the way current accounts behave. Equally, there was an issue with Direct Debit acceptance at a few places. Monzo needs to balance giving the customer new tools, and causing them issues when companies turn round and (for whatever reason) say “we don’t accept Monzo” because it causes so many problems.
But I already said I thought this was a great idea in principle.
Trying to get Monzo to do anything about it and uphold the direct debit guarantee was far more difficult than it really should have been.
This is one of those things they could build to provide a self help flow and to automate the handling of these problems and disputes.
If it was easy to contact Monzo, and they were always helpful and understood and resolved the issue correctly 100% of the time. And timely enough to bounce the payment before it’s taken, then sure, a push notification that a direct debit has been set up is probably sufficient. But what good is a notification when Monzo make it very difficult for you to actually do anything about it?
It’s not a case of being baby sat, it’s a case of saving all parties time, hassle, and frustration.
I don’t think it’s in the scheme rules for a bank to block the setting up of a DD, but it’s in the rules that the bank notifies you of the DD, and you have time to stop it. likewise, you should get notification of the amount prior to collection, and be able to stop it, and if you don’t, you’re entitled to a refund under the DD guarantee
Putting merchant blocks on is hard, as merchants tend to use a DD Breaux to do the leg work
And this is what the feature request is about. I way to automate and go through this process via a self help flow not dissimilar from disputing a card transaction. To avoid the ordeal of having to discover the chat feature, wait a while for someone who knows none of what you know tell you it can’t be done, by which point the direct debit will no longer be able to be bounced (costing Monzo in admin having to recover them), and refuse to honour the guarantee.
There’s still a few steps where the account holder can cancel the DD before that, and in the transaction itself, by clicking on ‘Something wrong, get help’ you are taken to a page which explains your rights under the DD Guarantee, and a button to ‘get in touch’ which takes you into Chat.
Now should staff be better at responding when the request is there, yep, but the flow is there in the app to raise concerns.
I don’t think automating the process should be done to be honest. It opens it up to abuse. Humans manually reviewing the ask makes more sense to me.
Just needs Monzo’s CS to get better, and have these requests flagged as urgent.
Off the top of my head, I don’t think the option to cancel a DD is available until after the first payment has been taken, but I haven’t had any new ones set up in a a long time so I can’t be 100% certain. Not sure if this is something that mandated though.
Automating the process doesn’t mean removing the human review element. The one I keep drawing comparisons to in my posts above is the process for disputing card payments.
You action it yourself, it’s still handled by a human, and no one ever has to talk to anyone. It’s really slick.
