Hey
So I have a bit of an issue where I order way too many take aways. I see Monzo have brought in the gambling restrictions and was wondering if they could do something similar for merchants like Uber Eats/Just Ear etc.
Yeah I know, willpower and all that but if you’re pretty drunk and it’s late in the night temptation usually wins!
So the 30 seconds to transfer the money to another account wouldn’t be a chore I suppose lol
Surely you should be asking them to block drinking establishments or off-licences if your issue is being drunk and buying takeaways
The same reasoning could be used for the gambling block 
As a former takeaway addict this could of saved me thousands! 
The same rule based system could be used for other merchant types like online shops or the PS4/Nintendo shop (assuming they have their own merchant codes).
Do you do it whilst drinking with others ?
Could you ask someone you trust to hide said card ?
Delete Just Eat and Deliveroo?
Serious suggestion.
Blocking certain merchants isn’t as easy as you think, as often there’s a workaround.
For example the gambling block wouldn’t stop you buying a lottery ticket in Tesco as monzo would have to block all Tesco transactions which isn’t ideal if you wanted to buy your weekly shop. (It’s still a fantastic way to reduce its accessibility though).
That’s why it’s limited to gambling for now.
Each merchant has a category code specified by MasterCard, this code is passed onto monzo when an authorisation is made. Any business in the gambling sector has this code and thus is blocked.
That’s not to say it won’t be looked at in the future but for now I imagine allowing users the choice to block their own merchant codes could cause some confusion when certain payments don’t go through.
It’s very easy if the merchant uses the correct codes. However like you said about lottery tickets, that is very true.
Sorry maybe didn’t explain well, yes it’s technically easy, just blocking a code as you say. But often there are busisness that have multiple services under one merchant code. Often sueepmarkets / online retailers maybe?
There’s this if it might be helpful: