A day in and a bit in and we’re starting to see some interesting patterns emerge…
Currently in first place - Monzo Credit Card (63%)
I had a fair idea from previous polls that a credit card from Monzo would be super popular. It topped previous wish-lists and has taken an early lead with quite a sizeable lead. Will it keep it though?
Currently in second place -Card payments from Bills Pots (53%)
I had this one (with credit card pots and credit card) as my bets for most popular. It’ll genuinely help folk, and help sort out Monzo’s budgeting conundrum, so it’s good to see this up there.
Currently in third place - Dark Mode ! 46%
I should have guessed this! Ever popular, and with some signs in the Android app, but will this make it to release in 2021?
The top-five are rounded out by…
credit card pots - 45% transfer money directly between pots - 43%
On the Battle of the Pays!
There’s not much energy for the Pays this time. Fitbit Pay is out (because they’ve been acquired by Google). Garmin and Samsung Pay are both languishing at the bottom with 3% apiece.
Anything that’s surprising anyone? I think, given the noise we hear about Post Office deposits and cheque imagining, I’m surprised they’re not higher. But there’s a long way to go yet!
I feel like a credit card is something that Monzo don’t have the power to do how people want/expect it.
We’ve seen from the lending that Monzo aren’t particularly generous. “MBNA give me £15k limit, why is it £500 with Monzo?” would be everywhere.
Do they have the lending power to give you 0% for 18 months on balance transfers/purchases? Probably not, they need to make money now, not in the future.
The cashback/points that make people use AMEX, can they match it?
I have two credit cards. One that has a 0% balance on for whatever big thing I bought and didn’t want to pay outright for and then another that I keep for emergencies or paying for something I want a bit more protection on. Could Monzo replace either of those? Maybe the latter.
For me, (Clive), it’s the little things I’d like improving just to make day-to-day better. Pot to Pot transfers, round ups on bills, subscriptions from pots, things that currently cause a little bit too much friction for my liking.
On credit cards, I wonder if Monzo could think a bit more expansively about the problem?
I voted for it, and what I had in mind was a card that gave me instant notifications, that gave me better insights into my spending and which had a great app. So, if Monzo were to partner with (for example) MBNA, Barclays or Amex for a Monzo-branded card that worked natively in the Monzo app, then I’d be all over it. If Monzo could make it a platform, where a variety of cards are available from different providers, but with the same deep integration, then even better.
Personally, I think it’s a mistake for Monzo to replicate high-street banks’ vertically integrated model. Think platform - there’s value in this for Monzo and for credit companies, I think.
For me I just want a credit card that’s managed by monzo.
I like they way monzo opperates and it would be good to have my credit card live within the same app as my bank account. It doesn’t have to have market leading intrest rates or perks, the selling feature (for me) is that it’s provided by monzo, a brand I’ve grown to trust.
I voted for a number of things… PLUS I’d like a white Premium icon for the App (please)
2 Likes
Anarchist
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32
To be fair, the question was
what would you like to see from Monzo in 2021
which is why I voted for it. I’d like Monzo to offer a credit card, in the same way I’d like Monzo to offer cheque imaging. I expect neither, and can live quite happily with neither.
Given how conservative Monzo are with their overdrafts I doubt they will launch a credit card. If they did I would imagine it would be so hard to qualify for.
1 Like
Anarchist
(Press ‘Help’ search ‘Contact us’ or email help@monzo.com or call 0800 802 1281)
35
Too kind.
It’s always an issue with polls, people not reading the question properly.
Same here - I just want Credit Cards to get the same shake up that Challenger Banks did to current accounts.
I’m not neccesarily after market beating rates (because I pay my card off every month), or 0% Purchases (haven’t had anything ‘out of budget’ enough to warrant - and if I did I’d probably look to a new specific credit card with a good offer), or Points - because I don’t have the energy to play the game to track them.
All of that combined means that I’m probably a not very profitable credit card user though, from the perspective of a Lender.
Given the backgrounds of the CEO and COO, I’d be pretty surprised if Monzo didn’t release a credit card in the next year or two.
I don’t think it matters. I think there are more than enough Monzo customers who place more value in superior spending visibility/tracking than having perks like long term 0% or cashback.
I originally wondered if Monzo US was going to pivot in a credit card type direction, or at least offer a companion credit card, given how prevalent they are over there and the new CEO’s background.
These are good points and it’ll be interesting to see which (if any) route Monzo take
Tom had always been anti credit cards because (I believe I’m right in saying) they don’t lend themselves to living within your budget. And I can see that. Neither these 0% on balance transfers nor 0% on purchases for 18 months seem like the road to sensible budgeting. I can see how some people might game these to make money out of savings interest, but that’s fairly niche (and hard to do with today’s interest rates) and a long way from simplifying finance for everyone.
So.. what does a monzo credit card look like? One simple low rate? Fee free foreign spending? Neat integration into the app? (I struggle to conceptualise was neat integration actually looks like because people use their CCs in such different ways.) It might just be a case of imitating the Apple Card.
Personally, I’m not expecting a radical, innovative credit card. Simplicity is the goal for me.
But why? What problem are you looking to solve with this?
Monzo isn’t a bank account. Monzo is a financial hub. I want a platform that provides an excellent user experience and that I can use natively for all my financial products. Think of it as the Google app store for financial products.
The reason I say that it is one is that I think that there are still lots of Monzonauts that sub-consciously approach app development with a Monzo = spending card mindset. We see that in the skeuomorphic representaton of the account by the card and in some of the copy in the app.
If we get over that, then we have folk thinking that Monzo is a current account. Which is true and all that, but it constrains thinking and leads to a sub-conscious movement towards a (perfectly nice) digital bank - rather than pushing the boundaries and going for a platform play.
So I don’t really think that Monzo is a perfect financial hub now. But if we keep calling it a current account I fear that’s all we’ll get. So a financial hub it is.
Does that make sense?
(Cue new CEO’s new year blog canning financial hub and doubling down on banking)
(I also think it says something that I can’t remember the new guy’s name).
Secondly - yes I do want it to be, desperately so. And I can understand what you mean about using the term over current account/bank to encourage it to become a financial centre.
If you went to a pop up market in a car park on a Sunday and there was just one stall there, is it a market or just a stall in a car park?
I see Monzo as the stall in a car park; there’s the potential for everyone to come and set up shop but right now it’s nobody but the one stall.
I think Emma, as I outlined above, has hit the nail a bit more at being a financial centre. Revolut have also.
I’ve never really got on with Emma (the app) but I’m all in on Money Dashboard. I’ve finally got it set up the way I want it, but could really do with some graphs and trend lines.
I’m afraid I don’t really get the Revolut as financial hub model. They seem to be building out their own product set vertically (and in some cases horizontally).
If we go back to the origins of Monzo, I think Tom was on record as saying that the current account was the “attack vector”. Put another way, you need a route into being a hub. He chose being a current account provider.
So what is a hub? For me it’s much much more than Money Dashboard or Emma (or Monzo). It’s somewhere where you can see all providers, click on one, have KYC done in the background, and have an account opened instantly. And this goes for savings, mortgages, loans…
This requires a large amount of unbundling of financial services. And for, for example, building societies to realise they can never “own the customer” and should specialise in largely commodity products that they distribute through other markets or platforms (like Monzo, or perhaps Emma). This also explains why, in the long term, we might see Monzo split into a bank and a customer facing app. But that’s a strategy that I think might be a while off yet…
So back to Revolut, I don’t see this play at all. I see them rebuilding the monolithic “do everything” bank for the digital age. That model may well win out, but I think it’s fundamentally different.
Anyway, who knows if this is still the plan. I hope it is. Maybe someone will tell us soon?
I get where you’re going here and what monzo’s vision is/was but for a financial hub, but I think it’s a bit of a contradiction/clash of focus to be the centre of the hub while also providing their own current account, which arguably should be a spoke pointing our to other current account providers; alongside other spokes for credit cards, loans, mortgages, savings, etc.
However if we are saying that the hub provider (monzo) can offer its own product at the end of one of those spokes i.e. a current account, I’d like to see what they can cook up at the end of other spokes too e.g. credit cards.
Currently in first place - Monzo Credit Card (63%)
Currently in second place - Card payments from Bills Pots (53%)
Currently in third place - Dark Mode ! 46%
credit card pots - 45%
transfer money directly between pots - 43%
Too kind.