I meant X number of deposits. Sorry that wasn’t clear
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So I’ve been to the barbers. Cash only. Took out £20, cost me £12. £8 change.
There’s a newsagent next door that does PayPal. And a post office down the road. If Monzo offered either of these options for free (and there was no queue) I’d just pay in my £8 change. If the fee was £1, I wouldn’t use it, as it wouldn’t be economical for me given the small amount I’m paying in. If I had £500 to pay in I probably would use it, though.
I have another bank account with branches and everything. I wouldn’t think about depositing that £8 with them as there are no branches where I am. And when I do go in they always insist on trying to teach me to use the machines (i know how they work, but when there’s no queue I quite like a bit of human interaction).
What do I take away from this?
Firstly, while we haven’t had the provider confirmed, Monzo is likely to have many many more places to deposit cash than your common or garden high street bank.
Secondly, this convenience would drive me to using the feature much more than I’ve ever done with my high street bank.
Thirdly, given these two (and that this service will cost Monzo money) there’s a likelihood that usage might actually be quite high.
Therefore, it’s a prudent move for a fledgling business to ensure that it doesn’t accidentally haemmorage cost. I don’t like paying fees more than the next person, but if we want there to still be a Monzo in a few years time, it needs to be sustainable.
Two more general but super important points to make:
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This is all a symptom of a broken banking system. Banking is not free in the UK. We think it is because people pay outrageous fees and charges. Which are mostly regressive with the poorest subsiding the richest. There’s a bigger issue at play here.
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I remain optimistic that when Monzo is profitable they will look again at their cost base. If (and as yet this is unproven) the marketplace is where the money is, I’d be hopeful to see things like overdrafts and payments in come down in cost over time. 10p for each sounds like a nice aspiration.
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one I doubt I’ll ever use as I pay my taxes
Dishing out the real truth right there 
Happy Cake Day!
Also yes i agree that if they gave x amount of deposits free ( a reasonable number) then had the £1 for deposits over that number it would be a good compromise.
That would allow people to once again use Monzo as their main current account (without the need for another) and the choice then to do it in a way you wont be penalised ( by using it as little or as often as you want)
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Similar happens with me but instead of the barbers it is the pub.
So now you have £8 in change and you have 2 options:
- Take time out of your day and possibly further expense to deposit it back into your account. Legacy or Monzo, it doesn’t matter.
- Keep hold of it for your next transaction since you’re likely going to spend again soon anyway.
I always go with option #2. I’ll pay in cash for my lunch at work the next day or if it is an expense greater than £8 (perhaps the weekly grocery shop) I’ll do part cash and the remainder on card.
I’ve always done this regardless of what bank I’m with and will continue to do so whether there are fees or not 
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Yeah, right, me too!
The point I was trying to make is that if paying in cash was free and super convenient (like in the newsagent next door convenient) then I’d just pay the money in. That’s inventivising me to do something I wouldn’t usually do and to cost Monzo money.
(And I’m still slightly grumpy at losing £4 in coins last week. Monzo’s made me more aware of money so previously I wouldn’t have cared. Now I can’t account for it. I hope someone found it and gave it to charity).
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Yeah I understood your point 
Even if the newsagents next door allowed me to deposit my cash I still wouldn’t to be honest. I wouldn’t want add another “chore” to my list and queue up in another shop. Same with a physical bank.
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+1 for this.
Anything under <£40 id keep in my wallet.
Over that amount and then id consider putting it into my bank.
Could that be another possible avenue? Minimum deposits of £20 say.
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I guess my problem with (any) fee is that is disincentivises something I would usually do with a bank (deposit cash, now and again, in ~£100+ increments). That it means that I can’t just close my high-street bank account is the annoying part.
And yeah, I get that it’s just £1. Just have a barrier about paying for something that 99+% of people aren’t paying for.
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I don’t know, some people seem to always find something to moan about, no matter what Monzo does.
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So lets say every single member uses this. Once a month, they pay in their cash. That then costs Monzo £1.1 million.
Ah cool. Not trying to argue - it’s healthy that we have different views on what we think we’d do.
(on an aside, some research on other subjects that I’ve seen is really interesting - like us, folk forecast what they think they’d do - then the evidence of their behaviour is actually very different!)
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Good point. It’s a shame that the proposed fee (is the £1 cost even certain?) doesn’t work for everyone. But hopefully Monzo are listening and gathering data.
My broader point (probably lost in my witterings about barbers) is that the system is broken. We can’t do anything about that - but we have free banking because there’s a cost to us somewhere else. Monzo doesn’t impose those costs, which leaves it as a disadvantage. And also indirectly causes problems and discussions like this.
I’ve said it before, but if free banking disappeared and there were (genuine) charges to run a bank account (rather than hidden in charges) then I think we’d see the likes of Monzo and Starling hoovering up customers and being at the top of the best buy tables.
(hmm, I wonder if there’s a country that operates this model that Monzo has its eye on?)
Stopping now before I go horrendously off topic!
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I don’t think the fee is finalised. I think it would be good to see experimentation around it: some sort of A/B testing to see what behaviour results from different fees. My fear is that choosing a single model (e.g., free or £1/deposit) skews the data. Of course, experimenting with fee structures has other problems around fairness.
I like your point about “free” banking. That new banks exist in an environment where we have the expectation that a set of typically bank-ish things should be free creates a problem. And I fully accept that Monzo is much fairer about the set of bank-ish things that we’ve come to accept attract exorbitant fees, and that this is sometimes not thought about in these sort of discussions.
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Every feature costs money, with Monzo deciding what they charge for and what they don’t. The mismatch between what Monzo thinks should be charged for, and what individuals think should be charged for, is what creates these discussions.
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Paying in cheques has been possible for ages (with a time cost for postage and processing). Do you mean the invention of something more convenient for cheques?
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Will Monzo cash deposits have a transaction limit? Like £250 or £500 etc.
As its a per transaction fee and not amount dependent id doubt it?
I find it interesting the approach of “this costs us money so we’re passing the cost on”.
Surely each and every thing that Monzo does has a fee. Cheque processing is free - but that certainly comes at a cost, (least no the Freepost subscription) - so where is the line drawn between what things will have a cost passed on, and those that won’t?
And I get the whole profitable / not profitable bit, and I also get the ethics behind “we don’t want to charge ridiculous fees” - especially those that create a perpetuating cycle of debt.
But in a way for a certain set of users, charging to allow access to their cash - is indeed doing that. If I work a part time restaurant job and need to pay in my tips weekly - that’s a greater impact on me than someone who touches cash twice a year.
And if your research is based on actual data from the app use - how do you control for any intrinsic biases that this may have? That bubble of “tech literate” users is certainly a thing - and I’m just generally interested in how you plan features that fit with the mantra of a bank for everyone. Like if I was a user that had to pay in £50 every 2/3 days - I probably wouldn’t be with Monzo in the first place - so does that map out in your data?
I certainly think sustainable business models are important, and I’d rather small fees for “added value” services - than outrageous fee structures that impact the poorest the most…
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Monese have a £249 limit per individual top up with PayPoint, up to a total of £500/day, £2500/week and £5000/month.
Not sure whether it’s Monese or Paypoint who set those limits though…