Be part of our cashback pilot 🎉

[Revels]

@michaelw90

Do Pot to Pot transfers show on the export?

Yup!

Even ones from my joint account direct to my pot.

[Peter_G]

@michaelw90

Nope. Doesn’t show in the list to select. 'cause it’s not a pot.

@iankent Gonna need to see the cashback pot in Trends please

[leejar (Lee J)]

Is there any chance of expanding testing to more users? I’d love to take part in this trial

[o99]

@BritishLibrary

I think treating it as the same as any pot based payments would be done is ideal -

So you can keep/maintain a history of the payments into the pot (for Google Sheets accuracy purpose)

But the main feed is only affected when the withdrawal is done.

That I think would be the most consistent I think

So are you suggesting the main account export should show transfers from main account into cashback pot, but those transactions should not show in the main account feed in the app? I think that could be confusing.

Part of the issue here is I may not be understanding the structure of the Google Sheet Export (I don’t use Plus/Pro). I’m going by CSV exports from the app where you get separate exports for main account and pots. Within the CSV file exports, each transfer from main account into a pot will show as a “money out” entry on the main account export (matching an actual withdrawal from the main account) and a “money in” entry on the pot export.

[Lewis_P]

@o99

So are you suggesting the main account export should show transfers from main account into cashback pot, but those transactions should not show in the main account feed in the app? I think that could be confusing.

I think round ups are already handled in this way. They are neatly shown in the account feed alongside the associated transaction, but have their own data entry in the google sheets export as a pot transfer with ‘round up’ as the description.

edit; oh I see, yeah you would need to have it show in the google export as an income into the main account, then a pot transfer to the ‘Cashback’ pot. So for every transaction you would have at least 3 entries (4 if you have round ups). The merchant transaction, the cashback income, then the pot transfer. I can see how this would be problematic if the money isn’t supposed to enter your account at all until you decide to ‘withdraw’ it. The other instance I can think of where money is added directly to the pot (rather than via the main account) is pot interest, which already doesn’t show up in the data export (maybe for this very same reason).

[o99]

@Lewis_P

edit; oh I see, yeah you would need to have it show in the google export as an income into the main account, then a pot transfer to the ‘Cashback’ pot. So for every transaction you would have at least 3 entries (4 if you have round ups). The merchant transaction, the cashback income, then the pot transfer. I can see how this would be problematic if the money isn’t supposed to enter your account at all until you decide to ‘withdraw’ it.

Yes, although my concern is more whether they would need to have these additional transactions show in the main account feed in the app in order to have them to appear in the export as row entries. I’d rather not have the extra clutter in the main account feed of the app. It actually doesn’t bother me if the export contains extra rows (they can be easily filtered using spreadsheet tools) but it seems to me there would be potential for confusion if main account export row entries don’t have corresponding transactions in the app.

It seems to me having a dedicated export for the cashback pot or having a new cashback column in the main account export (or both) would avoid these issues.

[BritishLibrary]

Maybe I need to revise how the CSV export looks - but broadly all I mean is the Cashback “pot” should be treated as a pot under the data structure.

I think I’m having a fever dream but I thought there was a world where “Virtual Cards From Pot” had their own entry mechanism on the CSV / Google Export - but alas they do not.

I think in an ideal world, for the optimal data management side of things, all movements of £ would have a From/To style ledger.

But in the current structure only the “withdrawal” transaction makes sense.

[Lewis730 (Lewis)]

I think from previous comments, this trial period is 100% funded by Monzo and theyll be getting the data they need from those 150 people. So it’s not a case of just opening it up to more people as the budget is already decided. Although yes I agree, I want in

[Lewis_P]

@o99

I’d rather not have the extra clutter in the main account feed of the app.

Well we know they can get around this, because they do it with round ups. In the data, round ups show as transfers from the main account to a pot, but in the app they are neatly hidden within the associated transaction.

The difference with cashback is that the money essentially materialises out of thin air in the cashback pot and is not the result of a transfer. It is income directly to a pot, which (if pot interest is anything to go by) doesn’t work with the current data model. Money can only be incomed into the the main account, not to a pot.

So I think we’re probably stuck with it only showing up in the data when it’s withdrawn from the cashback pot as a form of income.

[PaulUK]

@o99

Personally, I wouldn’t like anything which leads to individual cashback deposits showing up in the main account feed after every cashback transaction

Could be worse.

Algbra cashback appears as individual deposits in the feed, but no indication to which transaction they refer

And as you can earn 1% or 1.5%, depending on how you paid, it’s not always obvious to the casual scan either

[o99]

@Lewis_P

So I think we’re probably stuck with it only showing up in the data when it’s withdrawn from the cashback pot as a form of income.

Wouldn’t having a new cashback column in the main account export be a solution?

I’m assuming people want the data in the export so they can do analysis on things like cashback per category or per merchant. This would facilitate that as the cashback data would then be on the same row as the spend which generated it.

[Revels]

Separate row is fine, just treat it like round ups and then I think that solves it for everyone. It won’t be in the feed but it will be on the sheet.

[o99]

But I don’t think its the same thing.

I’ve never used round ups but my understanding is that if I have roundups on and I purchase something for £1.50 the spend entry in the app and in the export will show as £2. Or is this not correct? If that assumption is correct, it makes sense for there to then be a £0.50 row in the export representing transfer of round up from the main account to the pot.

But cashback is different. For a similar approach with cashback there would need to be extra deposits into the main account in order to facilitate a transfer from main account into cashback pot (and associated row entry) and for everything to reconcile.

[BritishLibrary]

@o99

£1.50 the spend entry in the app and in the export will show as £2.

In the Export that would show up as

• Merchant Transaction of £1.50
• Pot Transfer of £0.50

I think ultimately with the amount of new transaction types that Monzo are developing - there’s not a one size fits all solution under the current architecutre tbh.

With things like Pot Interest, Payments from Pot, Flex, etc - all of these in different ways don’t work in the Export. Well actually I guess they don’t work in the same way, in that they are not present.

[o99]

Ah yes, that makes sense.

But cashback is still fundamentally different.

[Lewis_P]

@o99

Wouldn’t having a new cashback column in the main account export be a solution?

Generally you don’t want to be adding additional columns every time a new feature is added. Ideally you want the current data structure to be versatile enough to support new features. The problem (from what I can tell) is that the cashback is inserted directly into the cashback pot without ever hitting your main account. Then you withdraw it from that pot and only at that point it becomes part of your account balance.

At the moment the export includes the following entry types (in my experience… I haven’t tried stuff like virtual cards):

Type	Description
Monzo-to-Monzo	transfer between monzo account holders
Pot transfer	transfer between main accounts and pots
Card payment	card payment from main accounts
Direct Debit	direct debit from main account (sometimes proceeded by a pot transfer to achieve “DD from pot”)
Faster payment	bank transfer to main account
Bacs (Direct Credit)	income to main account
Account interest	interest on main account (through plus/premium)
Flex	transfers between main account and your flex account

The withdrawals from the cashback pot can be a new ‘cashback income’ type or however they’re currently labelled and that would work in the current data structure. But I can’t see a nice fit for the cashback pot entries because they circumvent your main account and jump straight into that cashback pot.

[o99]

@Lewis_P

Generally you don’t want to be adding additional columns every time a new feature is added.

In that case, is there any issue with just accessing the data through pot exports (which could show individual cashback deposits even if they don’t come from the main account)? Pot exports already exist for other pots, but I don’t know if they exist yet for the new cashback pot (I’m not on the trial).

[Peter_G]

So I’ve reactivated cashback

For those asking, here are the screens:

Two bits of feedback for @iankent and team:

1. when I first activated, I turned on all of my offers. I assumed that deactivating cashback would turn them all off, but they were active by default when I came back. Which confused me for a bit, and I’m not sure is intended behaviour. (If you are using different aggregators for different brands I might want to select or turn them off individually - now I know more about how things work, I’ll be more selective in selecting offers, I think).

2. This screen feels a bit misleading:

I’ve activated all the offers possible, so it’s a call to action I can’t complete! And visually, part of me wants the cashback amount in large font in the same style as connected mortgages or accounts.

[iankent]

@Peter_G

I assumed that deactivating cashback would turn them all off, but they were active by default when I came back. Which confused me for a bit, and I’m not sure is intended behaviour.

Thanks for the feedback

We’ve discussed this a few times but it’s definitely something we need to think more about - the way it works right now is more a side effect of the way we’ve built Cashback rather than an explicit design choice that offers should stay activated after an opt-out/opt-in.

[Peter_G]

Out of interest, does everyone have the same set of offers?

It might make sense for Monzo to try tailoring then during the trial to see if they can affect behaviour. (I kinda rail against it, but that’s the whole point of the endeavour so won’t complain!)