Given that all their competitors that offer it do so for free, it would be an uncompetitive move to charge for it.
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Isn’t that the same case for cash deposits?
I wouldn’t mind this sitting behind the plus offering, assuming there is no extra charge, and maybe charging a processing fee for standard users, similar to how they’re handling cash deposits. Others do it for free though, so it would never sit right with most people.
True, but Monzo have proven that they don’t care about competitiveness in every feature many times before. (Cash deposits anyone?)
By the way, I wasn’t disagreeing that a justification was desirable earlier on, just that one was “owed” (or whatever form of words were used). The reality does appear to be that whatever transparency once existed is now very carefully nursed and only used to best advantage.
I’d like mobile cheque deposits.
I’d also far rather Monzo spend money and development time on continuing to innovate and setting the bar for a modern bank. Facilitating an outmoded & vanishingly rare form of payment is not doing that.
If I can only have one, I’m fine with mobile cheque deposits never happening.
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True, and to be purely technical about it, there is a way to do cash deposits and a way to do cheque deposit too if you absolutely have to. The fact it’s clunky or a bit uncompetitive is a different point completely.
I agree with the rest of your post too, and just to be clear I didn’t mean that an explanation or justification was “owed” or anything either in my earlier post. All I meant was that, since they have chosen to be open on the topic before, Monzo will leave customers expecting them to be open on the topic in the future. I fully accept that we are not entitled to this, and cannot demand a justification or explanation, but most of us probably do expect that if there are changes in approach, Monzo will share details on this since they have set the precedent of doing this previously. This doesn’t mean that precedents can’t change, of course.
On charging for the feature, clearly that isn’t too desirable, but if doing so means that development can happen under the aegis of the Monzo Plus project and it’s therefore available in some sense if customers really want or need the feature, I would support it. Perhaps some of the Monzo Plus fee can then help justify the cost and time investment? I don’t know.
@BenLeo I would argue that “setting the bar for a modern bank” would include at least measuring up to the digital services offered by traditional banks - including offering cheque imaging if they offer it. After all, to put it another way, they have already set the bar with this feature and if you want Monzo to be leading the way and offering the best experience out there, they need to offer at least this and more to go beyond the standards set by others.
It just doesn’t make sense to argue that missing features don’t matter because “in the future we won’t use cheques anyway”, or whatever; the fact is they are features that Monzo doesn’t have but many competitors do - so they are, in that particular sense, doing a better job of dealing with cheques in an exemplary way. Monzo’s method now is objectively worse - apart from the faffing around that posting entails, it takes longer and you therefore get the money slower.
And not to put too fine a point on it but if Monzo want their business banking to grow substantially then they will have to offer a better way to deal with cheques than they currently do. The facility would not just be used by personal customers.
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Exactly, business banking is a massive point.
I do also suspect that part of the reason work on this was suspended was to drive more staff attention and resources to business banking and Monzo Plus, to get them ready for launch. I understand this as that focus was important in getting to profitability.
Now both of those are released, perhaps attention will turn back towards implementing highly requested features like this. I hope so anyway!
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I’m in the minority that would like to see in app cheque imagine implemented and provided free to the masses.
With the current situation going on there is going to be an influx of cheques being issued for refunds of:
-holidays
-insurance
-vehicle exercise duty (if people declared SORN whilst not using their cars for months)
-HMRC tax
Having read through the last months worth of comments there are a lot of people saying they’ve received 3-4 cheques this month compared to none in the last year or so.
As an investor If monzo is looking to grow their user base to grow the company and as a result make money they should be offering the basics of a bank, plus all the pushing the boundaries of banking features.
At some point the user base looking for those new and exciting features is going to saturate, and avenues have to be made into ordinary basic bankers, and older bankers who want ordinary features that they associate with a bank like paying in a cheque.
I get the argument that not all major banks have the feature but they have branches you can physically visit. As an app only bank the equivalent would be an imaging system.
I also get it will cost money to process cheques, but it’s currently costing money for someone to buy an envelope (And a stamp? Not sure if free post or not), post the cheque then monzo’s cost of opening the cheques, manually inputting the data, (time is money), then shredding the cheque and paying for confidential waste collection. All of this is adding a carbon footprint onto the cheque.
I also understand the argument for waiting it out until cheques aren’t a thing anymore, but with large government agencies still issuing cheques and the number of them issued by businesses this isn’t the case yet. Some are still insisting on payment by cheque! My friend had to transfer his driving licence from SA to here and the DVLA would only accept payment by cheque.
Lastly the push for business banking, monzo need to support cheque payments to make any headway as the use of cheques business to business is far more than personal banking.
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They’re now done by bank transfer - it’s so much quicker. As was my last insurance refund 
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For some companies yes.
Those I have experienced aren’t (apart from HMRC, but they still send you the cheque too).
Also have that extenuating circumstance where original payment cards have expired in the policy lifetime, or payments by PayPal where a lot of companies will insist on cheque refund
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And more are moving this way too. Its easier and more cost effective for businesses just like it is for us👍
All businesses are now looking at how they can trim expenses given the situation. Or they should be 
and it will be interesting to see what impact it has on this.
As a BANK, Monzo simply have to get deposits right and using paypoint for cash and relying on snail mail for cheques really is not good enough!
I think 90% of what Monzo are doing is brilliant and the reason why I became an investor and ditched my old way of banking. But I still cannot get my head around this one. Surely potential business banking customers would think twice before opening an account!
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Can’t agree with you more!
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I don’t get the whole HMRC thing. I haven’t ever had a cheque from them. It’s always been bank transfer in my experience. I wonder why the variation in presentation for different people?
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From what I recall you receive a letter saying you’re owed money and it will be given to you soon.
On the back of that letter it states you can do nothing and they will post a cheque in 30 days. Or you can register for an account online and they’ll do a bank transfer within 5 days. Don’t quote me on the time frames 
So once you’re registered online you’ll never see a cheque again.
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Yeah I think once you have signed up for a personal tax account then you’ll never see a cheque again. Most people aren’t bothered by the back of a tax letter though. More like “refund” 
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What would happen if everyone that really wanted cheque imaging, wrote themselves a cheque for 10p and posted it to monzo, every day?
Who owns a chequebook in this day and age 
I still have one somewhere…