Too soon
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TL;DR Still no
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Guess we’d better cancel our plans for a yellow card with pink spots then 
I’ll go tell the team!
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oh dear goodness me
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revels why
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When these opportunities present themselves, you can’t let them go!
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Starling today announcing that you can now deposit cheques up to £1000 in app. Come on Monzo!
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I’m genuinely much happier since I just moved across to Starling so I could deposit cheques in app instead of just being annoyed at Monzo for not implementing it.
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This might be useful information for anyone finding this thread when struggling to deposit a cheque.
Banks supporting cheque imaging in-app include:
£1,000 limit per cheque
Starling
Lloyds, Bank of Scotland & Halifax
Barclays
Virgin Money
£500 limit per cheque
HSBC & First Direct
RBS, NatWest, Ulster Bank, NatWest International & Isle of Man Bank
Banks not yet offering support:
Monzo (not currently planned, postal deposit is available)
TSB (claimed to be coming soon, posting a cheque is possible and Post Office deposit is available)
Santander (post is recommended instead or you can use the Post Office)
Nationwide (post is recommended instead)
Metro Bank (deposit in-branch only, it may be possible to post to their Head Office)
Co-operative Bank & Smile (post is recommended instead or you can use the Post Office)
Danske Bank (deposits can be made at the Post Office)
Bank of Ireland (deposits can be made at the Post Office)
AIB (deposits can be made at the Post Office)
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It’s instructive to remember just how few banks actually offer the in-app option.
It’s a shame that big names like Nationwide and Santander aren’t offering it yet. Let alone Monzo!
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Fair point. But the big banks can at least fall back on their branches.
Maybe it’s just me, but sending a cheque in the post is just not an adequate option in my book.
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Oh not justifying its absence in Monzo, just commenting on use by other banks.
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Agreed.They should all be offering it. No doubt it would save the big banks money as their cost of processing physical cheques must be far higher.
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Cheque deposit via Post Office seems to be available for Santader, Co-op and Smile, at least according to the Post Office web site: Everyday Banking | Personal & Business Accounts | Post Office®
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All cheques get processed by image now. Even the ones sent into Monzo. Monzo just isn’t plugged directly into the system, and of those banks which are, some have the photo interface within their apps.
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I meant that getting the customer to do the scan on their phone is lower cost than having to use cashier time in branch.
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That’s true!
I wasn’t really intending to make an exhaustive list of which banks offer cheque deposit at the Post Office. For the record, basically all the traditional banks do with the exception of Metro Bank and Nationwide. There is a full list on the Post Office website, of course, as you’ve linked to.
My original thinking was simply along the lines of looking to expand the list so customers of various banks could see the easiest way to deposit a cheque from home without having to travel to a branch (the obvious traditional way). So, for those banks that didn’t allow it via app, I listed the next best alternative - usually post - and then if that still wasn’t possible but Post Office support was available I listed that. In the case of Metro Bank, as far as I could tell there was no advertised method at all for remotely depositing a cheque - except a reference to posting it from their advisors on Twitter. Basically, I was aiming to show how you could deposit a cheque with the least hassle possible at every bank.
I’ve now added Post Office information so everything is in one place.
Hopefully that makes the list useful for people!
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I find that more then anything, this feature is about being inclusive, which monzo prides themselves on. A lot of people on low income or with marginalised backgrounds receive and use checks. It is usually also something you could receive benefits on. Not providing this feature makes monzo less inclusive as a bank.
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I haven’t worked for Monzo for over 2 years at this point, so I’m unable to give you any internal insight that’s up to date, but I really don’t believe the research backs that up. While cheque usage may well be marginally higher amongst lower income folks, the fact remains it’s been trending downward in general across the entire populace for many years.
In 2020, cheques accounted for less than 1% of all payment methods used in the UK.
It’s also worth remember that Monzo does support incoming payments via cheque. You simply have to mail them to Monzo. Joining the cheque imaging scheme to make that process slightly more convenient for the small minority of customers that use them, when usage is rapidly trending downwards, just isn’t a great use of development resources.
All development is a trade-off, because no company has unlimited resources. So effectively, by putting resource into something that less than a single percentage point of customers use, is making a decision to not put resource into something that exponentially more customers use.
I’d argue that it’s far more inclusive to actually improve services that affect the majority of customers.
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