… a further suggestion would be to see a further breakdown after entering the link to ‘the cashback pot’ as a sub-list if you need to understand the cashback from certain areas e.g. food, travel etc for your own accounting purposes. Agree that a single pot is all that is necessary with alerts as per user preference.
1 Like
What would be your approach with refunds? Let’s say a partner offers 2% cashback on what might be a large one-off purchase - the cashback becomes available, but you return the item two weeks later after you’ve received your cashback reward.
I’d love it if cashback could be a feature on the account. I run most of my card spend through a cashback Amex right now - having cashback on Monzo would mean being able to put everything through there instead and make all the budgeting/tagging stuff much more meaningful.
I’d be happy with a monthly or even annual cashback pot. That ought to get over the hump of what happens if you get a refund on a purchase, because the cashback can be clawed back from the big pot, like with my Amex.
1 Like
Cashback within my current account would be great. I’d sideline my Amex if that I could get cashback from my current account.
I can’t believe I’d get cashback with my current account. I’ll believe it when I see it. If you can get that people will be queuing around the block.
Just how serious are Monzo thinking this might actually happen??
It is possible. TSB will give you £5 per month if you use the debit card 20 times a month up until June 2018 (brand new customers only). Not quite the same, I know, but they used to give 5% (if memory serves) on contactless purchases.
1 Like
Yes, I had the TSB deal previously and had that cashback. It’s always time limited, but if Monzo could do something similar that was ongoing, then I’d sign up.
Now that would be great. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
1 Like
It would attract customers if Monzo did offer a similar incentive. It could be that they don’t want to grow too quickly, though.
I suspect it’ll just be 5% cash back next time you go to Starbucks or wherever.
I find it interesting that Monzo are considering this type of proposition. To make it effective for me, the cashback would have to be a periodic lump sum, so its impact would be more distinguishable from day-to-day spending.
As an alternative, I also like the idea of non-financial cashback - usually in the form of Avios. I currently use a Lloyds Airmiles Duo Card (Amex), on which I earn enough most years to pay for 2-3 European flights. I guess I could get the same benefit by putting aside £1 each day over the whole year (or getting £1 cashback each day), but the subsidised flights (since BA still make me pay £35 in taxes) feel much more like a reward.
Any chance this option could be added as an alternative?
8 Likes
This would be excellent. I generally do my day to day spending with my visa credit card because I get 0.5% cashback on every transaction, regardless of what it is for and who it is with. If Monzo adopted the same approach I’d only use the credit card for emergencies, or purchases where section 75 protection would be useful.
2 Likes
I love the idea of creating a cashback pot. We could even “lock it” and then have a Cashback Day where it’s unlocked - bonanza!
I’ve seen a lot of mixed feelings about cashback and I would like to clarify some concerns:
-
Monzo doesn’t set any debit card processing fees. These are set at a payment processor network level (MasterCard, in our case) and are paid by retailers
-
The type of cash back program we might look into would not be funded by Monzo but rather by the participating merchants. These retailers have certain goals and use cash back to achieve them. They might be interested in increasing their market share, their footfall, customer loyalty etc. They would be willing to pay cash back to the cardholders as an alternative to more traditional marketing spend.
-
We might disagree on this point, but I struggle to see how retailers would decreases their prices if there were no debit card processing fees (which by the way are in the range of 0.25%-0.35% in the UK). They use cash back as a way to achieve specific marketing goals, as per my point (2). If a retailer is willing to pay 5% or even 10% cash back on a given transaction, I don’t think they are so worried about the small card processing fee. (I do agree that this has a much bigger weight for smaller and independent retailers, and usually these don’t take part in any cash back program)
-
Furthermore, reducing prices across all retailers wouldn’t help any specific retailer achieve any of their goals. If I’m Tesco and I want to increase my market share vs Sainsbury’s, I could reduce my prices. Sainsbury’s would probably do the same in response. This is how a “perfect competition” type of market works until we reach the optimal price. However, I would not be driving more customers to my Tesco stores than I was before. Cash back is seen by retailers as a way to reward customer loyalty or drive customer acquisition. This is nothing different than more points-based reward schemes (e.g. Tesco Clubcard, Avios)
I’d love to hear your feedback on the points above. Thanks for bringing so many ideas to the table!
19 Likes
If you can pull cashback on every purchase off on a debit card, that would be a genius master stroke!
If you can pull this off successfully, you’ll get my business for sure!
4 Likes
Could you clarify one more per chance? 
1 Like
Hey Oliver!
We haven’t really defined how this would work but I don’t see us actively pushing you towards a specific merchant that provides cashback. In reality, we might probably show a list of all the merchants you can get cashback at, if you wish to do so. This has less to do with us advertising merchants but more with our general approach to Transparency by default.
In the future, I can see us running some tests on highly targeted and relevant merchant offers. While we wouldn’t offer these unless we thought they were great for you, we understand that not everyone would feel comfortable with the targeting and it would totally be an opt-in type of initiative.
Does this answer your question? 
7 Likes
The idea sounds good to me. I’m all for essentially subsidising my purchases and giving Monzo a cut 
2 Likes
Good stuff. One of the popular cash back current accounts is Santander 1-2-3, although their main benefit is interest (in exchange for a fee). Main cash back is for mortgage payments (NA for Monzo), then things like recurring fees (mobile/telco, etc). Question is does Monzo want to incentivise transactions (cash back) or balances (interest)? If the former then how does that tie into Quidco style marketing kickbacks sorry fee returns, or is it just a card provider fee reduction. And note for debit cards the latter is usually pretty small (1.5%? but with a fixed fee component …) making the margin for cash back likely small too …
Sorry didn’t see this post. What would be the retailer incentive if there was no measurable marketing element? Would Tesco say Monzo purchasers are more valuable than Barclays customers?
I suspect they would want awareness. Which means a Monzo app page listing retailers and relative cash back, or an alert if you enter such an establishment … and that quickly gets intrusive!
1 Like
Sure can, though if its opt-in I don’t see much harm in it
For anyone interested, below is a screenshot of Santander’s cash back page in the app. I guess that this is the sort of thing Monzo are looking at.
I mean…that is the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen - I really hope that is not what Monzo is aiming for
(The UX is terrible: not only is the amount of red offputting but there is far too much information on that screen which makes it very hard to read)
7 Likes
Is that location aware or are you just in a shopping mall?