I’ve mentioned this earlier in this thread:
It’s relatively easy to disable payment with friends in card settings and only enable temporarily on the rare occasions that a transaction needs to be made. Not an ideal solution but I can live with it. Ideally it would be useful for me to opt in to share with individually selected contacts.
I totally understand the concerns with privacy raised here. It seems like hugo has taken note and I assume it will probably change in time.
Secondly its interesting to hear that people are now seeing more and more of their contacts have monzo. This is also the case for me. Each time I send money I am slowly seeing that list grow. Maybe there is capacity for Monzo incentivise this. I mean like make it competitive. Like who can get 50% of their contact list on monzo first ect.
Yep, it’s definitely a fairly new problem.
6-8 months ago, most people had only 1 or 2 contacts on Monzo. Of course, we had less than 100,000 users at that time, and now we’ve hit 200k! So it’s not uncommon for people to have 10+ people showing up in their contact list now in the app. For many people it might even be more than 15 or 20.
Can I remove contacts from the payment screen, as it is populated by contacts (work colleagues) that I will never want to pay?
Hey Daz. I’ve moved your post here.
Short answer - no. At least, not at the moment.
I’d also like to not see work contacts in a personal banking app.
Hi!
I’ve just opened a Monzo account and signed up to the community. But even though I clicked on the link to ask a question, I cannot see any place on the screen to ask a new question. I only managed to find this ‘Introduce yourself’ option.
I do have a question though… On the app I did the ‘search for contacts on Monzo’, and one name/icon appeared on the screen beneath the heading ‘Pay someone on Monzo’. How do I remove this icon from my screen? It’s a person I hardly know.
Thanks
It’ll be a contact from your phones contact list that has matched with being a Monzo user. The only way to remove them at the moment is to:
Monzo are working on better Payee Management in the near future so hopefully the ability to fine tune things like this will be possible.
Thanks very much indeed - very helpful
Is there a way to remove people from my “Contacts on Monzo” section on the Pay tab?
Unless you delete them from your contact list on your phone, unfortunately not 
I know it’s possible to block people from p2p payments by contacting cops. Not sure if it makes them dissapear from the list but I assume so.
Would mean sending and receiving money from that contact via p2p wouldn’t work tho.
I think the list is generated on the client so even if you ban people from P2P they’ll still be displayed.
Just curious as to why you’d want to delete someone from the payments tab but not from your contacts… surely it’s not a big deal especially since your most recent payees take priority and the unwanted ones will be far down the list.
You can revoke Monzo’s access to your contacts but then that makes this big notice:
Which is kind of more annoying than a few contacts that I don’t really send money/talk to
In my case, because my only Monzo contact is my grocery delivery driver - I don’t want to delete them from my contacts because it’s useful to know it’s them calling, neither do I want them appearing in app as they are not someone I have any sort of personal relationship with.
It’s really irritating, and IMO unecessary that Monzo requires this to access features. I understand it is convenient for many people and makes features incredibly easy to use, but there should also be an option to allow you to use features without enabling this access.
And it’s weird having Grindr hookups appear in my banking app.
Weirder to think I might still appear in theirs long after I’ve deleted (or blocked) their numbers from my phone.
I guess it’s kind of the same as seeing some random stranger use their Hot Coral card in the newsagent. Kind of 
Might be useful as a prompt to reconnect with an old acquaintance 
“acquaintance” 
Bit weird if they do that by sending cash.
I think there needs to be a better way to pay a contact without granting access to a contacts list. Just split the bill with partner and only way I could do this was by allowing access to contacts - something I never do but as a one off I did and I noticed all my nieces and a member of my wedding band listed. A number of issues I can see
I haven’t given permission for these people to see I have a Monzo account and they haven granted me permission. I understand it’s all done by hashing and Monzo don’t store or know but there is still a significant GDPR issue in that I can’t stop people seeing I have a Monzo account (unless I use a different email address to the one they have) and someone can request or send me money just by having my email address in their contacts. Being in Monzo’s T&C doesn’t count you have to explicitly ask permission for this (my professional view but I’d recommend talking to a Data Protection legal expert)
UI issue of being able to remove/hide contacts from being listed
Functionality of being able to block contacts from sending, requesting and receiving money
Way of splitting bill or paying a friend without granting access to contacts e.g. Bluetooth before asking for contacts and then “do you want to remember this person?” Or “enter friends email” then do hash for just that email and then “do you want to remember this person?”
Completely agree - there is no reason at all Monzo needs access to all your contacts, and it is frustrating that many features such as monzo.me are not available unless you do this.
I’m pretty sure there isn’t a GDPR issue. Other people can only see that you have a Monzo account if you agree to share your contacts with Monzo, which is explicitly asked.
On the general point of Monzo features requiring access to your contacts:
I agree that Monzo.me and Nearby shouldn’t require access to your contacts.
However, I think it’s perfectly fine for features like Bill Splitting, Shared Tabs and general P2P payments (except when Nearby is used).
I also think the “input friends email” and “do you want to save this person” suggestions are unnecessary and I doubt they’ll be implemented.
The ability to block and the ability to hide Monzo contacts will hopefully be implemented.