Cheque Deposit

They did not exist years ago though. They only became a bank at the beginning of last year, so they only had that time to decide to cover this or something else

They chose something else. Their choice

I’d love to never receive a cheque again, but unfortunately I think we could still see cheques for the next 20 years. :cry:

Of course we could, but that isn’t justification for building and developing a system to allow the payment of it.

Remember, monzo isn’t a bank for everyone. They have their target audience and if your receive cheques you’re not that audience.

There’s nothing wrong with that, monzo can target whichever customer base they want. It’s never going to be for everyone.

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Don’t forget they missed their window for applying for a licence too.

That is probably the most important aspect in their decision.

Not to mention it looks like the scheme was only up and running in October 2017 - so a little over a year and a half to make a decision and then implement if they decided to.

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The thing is they do want to be a bank for everyone. Its just easier to get a certain demographic onboard as early adopters. I would have though receiving cheques is pretty even across most demographics as it isn’t something you can control most of the time if its a business sending you a cheque and they won’t just pay it directly. I would say people still writing cheques themselves is almost nil in comparison to businesses still sending them out. I fully appreciate if you have fewer household bills in your name, or doing business then you’re less likely to receive cheques.

In the UK alone just under half a billion cheques are written per year (400+ million).

What they say and what they do are two different things, monzo wanting to be a ‘digital’ bank means it can never be a bank for everyone. No branches, no ATMs, no cheque services, no appetite for savings, credit cards, mortgages, no access for anyone without photo ID, no actual robust call centre, no web service, no fee free cash pay in service, no service to those without a smart phone, the list goes on.

Monzo is a bank for a specific type of person, and that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. Monzo will never cater to everyone.

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Which demographic is that? the 18-55 year old, student/employed, tired with their legacy bank/fin-tech enthusiast? It is clearly evident just by this forum that there is a very wide user base for Monzo.

But it is still dying out for personal use - UK Finance have a pretty good report on payments: UK Payment Makets 2018

The number of cheques used to make payments continued to decline over the past year, falling by 15% to 401 million cheques, as both businesses and consumers chose to use alternative payment methods instead. Cards and remote banking transfers in particular are increasingly used where previously a cheque may have been written.

Figures: 1,581(million) Cheques written in 2007 - 401(million) Cheques written in 2017 - 147(million) forecasted for 2027

Despite the introduction of cheque imaging, both consumers and businesses are expected to continue migrating away from cheques to alternative payment methods. It is forecast that there will be 147 million cheques used to make payments in 2027.

Cheques really are dying out :man_shrugging:t2::man_shrugging:t2:

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I was saying that people writing cheques is almost nil in comparison to businesses still writing them. Are you quoting to say half a billion cheques are written solely from people each year, or thats its a lot or not a lot to worry about? I would assume that stat is both people and businesses, what I’m interested in is the split.

401 million cheques written in 2017 - that means both personal and business.

The overall total payments made in 2017 was 38,830 million. Cheques make up just over 1% of all payments made.

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I fully appreciate cheques are dying out, all I’m saying is people still get them regardless of demographic (even when they want to be paid directly) and will continue to get them until people with cheque books die out and businesses stop doing it for refunds/compensation which could be another 20 years.

I think we should be at a point where we just go click to take a photo and be done with it. Going into town to a legacy bank, or posting a cheque seems ridiculous in 2019.

The system went live in 2017 but the law to enable cheque imaging got Royal Assent in
March 2015 with the Government having consulted on the plans in 2014

Other banks (i.e. Barclays) began to trial the technology then - so there was plenty of time for Monzo to prepare if it had wanted too once it launched in 2015.

But the use case just simply isn’t there - what is the point of putting in time, money and resources to develop cheque imaging when:

  1. Monzo allow processing of Cheque by post;
  2. You can open a Legacy Account which will do Cheque Imaging for you; and
  3. The percentage of cheque usage is 1% of ALL payments made in the UK

It just doesn’t make business sense.

Receiving a cheque seems ridiculous in 2019.

Considering Monzo launched in 2015 I think they would have had other priorities in mind other than developing cheque imaging at the time it had just come out. They also weren’t admitted a full banking licence until April 2017, so again would have had other things on.

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The time, cost, resources for devs to build the feature is definitely there for me, it would be interesting to hear from Monzo on what there current stance is on doing it. I don’t think they would be building it for the sake of it or fun, it has a purpose. To me they’ve just said that other things have taken priority which is fair when you have a small dev team and small customer base.

Monzo now have 2.1m customers and 1000+ staff, I don’t know how many of those are devs that have the skills to work on it but they’ll most certainly have more capacity than 2017.

We are beginning to repeat some of the arguments in the other threads and I am sure everyone agrees its better if the conversation stays in those rather than repeat them here

All, I will say is that as a shareholder, its in Monzo’s interest not to give customers a reason/justification to hold another bank account in addition to Monzo - and it will need such functionality if it wants to get to 4, 5, 6 million users etc instead of limiting its appeal.

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This.

There’s almost no reason to. There not legacy banks, and in comparison they do basically everything monzo does and more. If the answer is ‘use another banks for cheques’ then the real answer is ‘switch banks’ completely. If monzo doesn’t have the features you need there’s no reason to use them at all.

For you sure, for others not - I don’t use cheques, can’t remember the last time I saw one - so for me, I’d rather it never be thought about again.

It has a purpose but is inherently loss making - it makes no money for Monzo.

Sure they might - but the business case remains the same - its 1% of all payments, so what’s the point when Monzo already have the capability to process via post - it isn’t like the feature isn’t there in some form.

Agreed - I did link to the threads at the beginning and maybe someone from the CC could merge? (@Feathers @anon99402360 @Peter_G)

I don’t think this holds up to scrutiny. Monzo don’t have credit cards, mortgage loans, business loans, student accounts, high interest savings vehicles - they are all supplied by the bigger boys (hell even the savings vehicles Monzo does have are with another bank). Not having cheque imaging will not and has not hurt Monzo - its limiting appeal to 1% of all transactions made. I really don’t see the business case for implementing.

They’ve hit 2 million customers without it - is not having cheque imaging the glass roof for banks? I don’t think so.

I still have 2 legacy accounts - and yet all of my money goes through Monzo (and next to nothing through the legacies).

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I haven’t had a cheque book for a least a decade, or witnessed anyone writing one out in that time either. Yet yesterday I received a cheque from PlusNet. I wish they just paid it to my account, but they refused.

It’ll make Money indirectly by gaining customers who need to process cheques.

Thats just because they need someway of dealing with them. They would get so many so what am I supposed to do with this questions to chat? Imagine if the answer was create a legacy bank account.