April Open Office Streaming here from 7pm

This is pretty interesting to read.

I fall into ‘Non Salaried - Migrated’ and given prepaid is now closed thats the most expensive category - closely followed by ‘Non Salaried - New

From what I see on the current roadmap there’s nothing likely to make me switch my salary in there either. (and this isn’t because i wouldn’t or don’t want to).

At what point does monzo either bin me off or really look into why? (and no its not apple pay and CASS both nice to haves).

How does monzo really understand - especially outside of this forum what customers actually expect/need from it, and why people wont move over?

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I think we’ll look at what the salary uptake is after the full CASS rollout, which is very soon for everyone :grinning: And perhaps after another major feature launch. After that, we can really address the other reasons why people may not want to switch, after we’ve grabbed the low hanging fruit.

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Makes sense.

I’m sure CASS and that other feature will both boost the numbers, will be interested to see how much by for both.

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If you don’t mind me asking, are you generally happy with your other bank, or are there specific features that are missing in Monzo, and/or something else (effort to switch maybe?) that would prevent you from switching?

All you have to do is ask us and we’ll tell you! Just DM me and I’ll be more than happy to explain!

I was there and I think the finger sign comment was more tongue-in-cheek than anything. I don’t think there would ever be an actual indication (to the customer) whether they were a good or bad customer.

If anything Monzo seem to have a ethos similar to “nudge theory” (based on a really interesting book called Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness). For instance, they nudge customers who top-up rather than transfer, asking if they can use other methods, without any obligation to do so. The nudge approach can be by suggestion, or simply by reordering or rewording the options available to a customer. It has been proven to work successfully in the past.

It looks like the next “nudge” will be asking customers if they can put their salary in, which becomes understandable if it reduces the marginal loss from a customer by 50-75%. I would say the broader risk is assuming everyone will have a salary to pay in. Students won’t, those taking time out of work or looking for work probably won’t. When the nudge comes it will need to be carefully phrased to avoid offending those people.

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The salary bit bothers me. Why not say income? Are student loans and benefits not good enough?

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I wonder if it’s because salaried users is an easier term and it’s based on the amount as well I think … :thinking:

incomed users :see_no_evil:

Many people are on benefits both in and out of work. By using the term salary it gives the impression that we’re not the sort of people Monzo want. I doubt that’s the case but I’m still waiting from Friday for a reply from chat about what is classed as income (benefits etc) for an overdraft.

Incomed users sounds terrible :scream:

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I started this one 2 years back but it was more of a culmination of all banks i’d used rather then a specific.

Am i happy with my bank - which one? :slight_smile:
The legacies as above link but they offer better features, consistency and perform as expected.
Starling = no (login bug is dumb and infuriating to use and overrides any goodwill i have - i wouldn’t recommend them)
Monzo = its truly brilliant at disposable spending (real time notifications & customer service). But it is a bank in name only and not usability/features.

I totally understand that. :+1:

I’m gonna find out if it’s just salary etc that it refers to.

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It’s probably just unfortunate usage. Although maybe a question for over here?

(My own view: replace “salary” with “income”)

On the cost issue, I’m assuming the difference is down to BACS/faster payments being cheaper than top-ups. It’s be interesting to know if, say, 10 faster payment / BACS transfers into Monzo a month gives the same cost figure as the “salaried” one?

Also, thinking aloud, if a salary implies more money coming in, presumably Monzo makes more money from Mastercard fees etc, as it implies that all spending is from the Monzo account?

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I think it might be more the higher interest they get for the days between you getting paid and mortgages/rent/bills going out.

My two cents : Whilst we, of course, take great efforts to use inclusive language, sometimes the logical term to use is the one that represents the greatest amount of people, or is representative of where the product is at this moment in time.

For the majority of people, and this is what the new Spending revamp addresses, the stuff that they need visibility over will include a monthly salary payment, and then an understanding of what bills will be coming out every month, and then visibility of what the remaining amount of money is.

There are all sorts of different use cases, but for Spending to work well (at least, right now in it’s initial version) it’s going to have to be based on things that, for most people, happen once a month. Once a month your salary comes in and once a month each of your bills comes out.

Income is a more fluid term. It can mean anything. You might have income every week. You might have income every day! You might have income at completely random intervals, especially if you’re a freelance worker. And these are things we aim to address over time, but they have a huge amount of variables.

So what I would say is - “salaries” isn’t intended to be an exclusive term, where we exclude people whose income isn’t strictly a salary. It’s purely intended to denote fairly predictable regularity, which is - for now - how we are creating the initial revamp of the Spending tab and to denote a general idea that someone is using Monzo as their “main” bank account.

Does that make sense? It may not be the best term, and if there’s a super obvious replacement word that we should already be using we’d love to know what it is :grinning:

All my own opinions, of course - different folks in the company may have a different take, with different nuances etc.

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I’d side with this :+1:

He has more time and a better way of phrasing things!

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Comparing with MSE is valid insofar as to highlight how 1.0 it is. As a lobby organisation, they have helped push through very important changes, which is awesome! But it doesn’t leverage behavioural economics and nudge. It hasn’t streamlined any processes to switch. And it relies primarily on one CRA (itself an outdated model) in their matching product to offer you the ‘best’ deal, to list but a few reasons as to why Martin may not be seeing the switch conversion he (and all of us would hope for).

This is precisely where the opportunity lies with Monzo’s marketplace by leveraging OpenBanking. The opportunity is then there for providers to enter the marketplace to offer up relevant products to Monzo clients. Trust is everything here, as I believe products and services must be a) highly tailored to individual customers financial circumstances, b) proactively offered to account holders, and c) offer up an entirely seamless process

i.e. based on your xyz variables (income, predicted income, spending habits (frequency, amount, type) macro factors, age, CRA data) AND available products in our marketplace (parameters set by providers) = products abc are recommended for you with the following expected financial outcomes (costs/gain) in line with your goals with all usual caveats and transparency over referral fees applying. accept / decline. And boom - the net outcome: people will be better off.

As Tom alluded to, change is a comin’ and it will be game changing. The real questions are can Monzo pull it off and are we ready?

Edited to add: How exciting!

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Unlike most bankers, he is neither a liar or a bore. :wink:

So true! In fact I invested in Monzo because of my confidence in Tom rather than because of the figures or any presentation.

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That is normally the case with me, but actually he was the first one I hadn’t met. Had to be quick in 96 seconds! Had some good chats with him since though.

I must have been quick, which is unusual for me, the only time I would break into a run is if I heard a shop round the corner was handing out free cake!

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