There’s been some talk in the Monzo Labs: Pay anyone by text or email thread about Monzo having a separate app to pay contacts by name rather than by account number - something like WeChat or Venmo.
Let’s keep the thinking about what this might mean / if it’d be helpful this thread and save the Labs one for feedback on the current Monzo functionality!
Pay in a general way is really bravo. Text is ok while email is just too old-school.
Highly recommended: Why not Create another brand new app to have everyone into it thus everyone could have chance to receive and send money easier. Example: PayMe from HSBC (https://payme.hsbc.com.hk/personal).
In text: 1. Why not consider iMessage app for iOS users, good examples: Venmo, Cash app, or even Apple Pay Cash (US);
2. Embedded into other msg apps, like WhatsApp, Messenger,…;
3. Payment should be easier. Letting your customers’ friends enter his/her bank account again and again is really a bad experience when they receive money (It’s impossible for everyone to remember bank details)? Look forward to a more universe way.
My impression is once they have done it once their payment details are saved, so they would never need to do it a second time.
What if change the payers?
I don’t understand the question?
A and C are Monzo users, and B is an HSBC user. I just not sure will B’s bank information be saved after A sending money to B by text and B filling his/her bank information thus B would be more convenient when C sends money to B.
In my opinion, it would be a disaster currently because B may want to change to his/her Barclays account to receive money.
In all, create a universal app would be a better choice. Users just need to add their bank cards once in the app and they can transfer their money from the app to their bank card anytime.
Except to text and email, we can use QR code. And if we connected to FB or mobile number, we may transfer money or split bills more conveniently.
I think I see what you are saying. You would like it so that if I wanted to send money to you, despite not knowing you or knowing your details, I could select you from a central repository of bank information where your details are stored?
100% no from me! I do not want my details stored so that people I do not know have access to them. 200% no to storing them in facebook or any other social media related account (including whatsapp).
By mobile number already exists, called Paym.
As proved my Payms low sign up numbers I would not expect this to be very popular.
Personally I also have no interest in signing up for yet another app/service, and it would seem that a lot of people feel the same.
Other people may feel differently of course.
The worst that would happen is the money would bounce back (AFAIK), or be redirected if they had opened a new account via CASS. The former of which would just mean you ask them for their details, which is fine to me.
I will say again that, for me, If I was B and A paid me, I would NOT want C to be able to have access to those payment details without me giving them to them - I have no idea who C is or what their intentions are.
Here are a few reasons why a “universal app” would be a much worse solution:
An additional app would take up extra storage on the non-Monzo users phone - not everyone has loads of available storage for extra apps.
An additional app would cost Monzo loads more developer time (you’d need iOS and Android apps), which they could spend on other features. Since the current functionality does the job of the “universal app”, there is no reason for Monzo’s engineers to waste time developing and maintaining this new app.
I’m not saying that the current functionality can’t be improved, but a separate “universal app” isn’t the best way forward.
Sorry for misunderstanding!
Of course C will not have your bank account!
My question is, will Monzo knows B’s bank information after A pays B, even though it’s good for B for further use?
For instance, Monzo saves bank details if B won’t need to re-fill his/her bank details for his/her second receiving money from A (p.s., B is not a Monzo user).
And if Monzo save the bank details for users’ convenience, it creates another app!
My understanding is that bank details are not humanized. We transfer money to our friends or merchants not an account. To aim it, I do believe people are willing to cost their 5 or 10 mins to download it and signup an account.
As you said, Paym is not very popular. I cannot agree more: We cannot find it in the stores or we cannot get our friends suggestions on it, and thus you cannot expect any surprise!
Please find something positive! Paym is a failure but it doesn’t mean this mode is a failure. There are really good examples in the largest market in the world expect to the UK! Venmo and PayPal in the US 
, Alipay and WeChat Pay in mainland China 
, PayMe by HSBC and Alipay HK in HK 
. Why not research these successful products?
Monzo has been such a good bank so far is because its currency, its gene of internet, and everyone talks about it.
However, the currency is cooperated with MasterCard. For the gene of internet, if Monzo has enough tech to do it, other high street banks can do it. Everything is time. For more details, please reference to Citi, Chase, Wells Fargo, and BoA in USA. They can satisfy the gene of internet and they have really good credit card system which Great Britain doesn’t have such.
If you can imagine that the app is not only an app just to transfer money and the everyone is using it, I think you won’t care download it because you have to do it.
Most users in Great Britain are non-Monzo users.
It’s last day of 2018, really sad for silicon valley.
If you are an employee of Monzo, please resign!
Please use your imagination to do the right thing not the easier one!
Wow.
Just wow.
Fear not! In only twelve months, it’ll be the last day of 2019 
Yes, as far as I can see so far. You can then save it in Monzo against their contact name - to use your word it is then humanised.
No? It just saves it as a contact under the payments section.
These apps lock you in to paying people within their eco system as far as I am aware. I’m not sure what the benefit of another app is over just having the user saved within your monzo contacts.
To me it makes more sense to focus on Monzo growth, which is already very rapid, and just get more people to have monzo accounts, rather than try to get people to have both monzo accounts and some other additional app.
I’m really not sure what benefit there is of having a separate app?
Just sorry for the severe tone 
Really hope Monzo can beat HSBC and Barclays. However, Monzo is good but not good enough now. For instance, as a young Monzo user since March, there are several bugs like flashback in my iOS device …
Why this as a goal over just having everyone having a monzo account as a goal?
This sounds exactly like what Monzo are attempting to do.
One of the ideas behind Bill Splitting, Shared Tabs and the ease of sending Monzo-to-Monzo payments (without having to know a the other person’s bank details) is to encourage everyone to get a Monzo account - even if it’s just to use features like those at first.
Everyone having a Monzo account sounds a lot like your “universal app”.
Great idea!
Monzo growth is really important, and please grow it 
.
A separate app is an eco-system for high street bank users. It’s not as convenient as Monzo for them to transfer money.
For lots users, they just like high street banks: 1. For salary; 2. Credit card system and trust system; 3. High street banks are high street banks.
I hope so in the future. But please consider for high bank users. Lots of them are not willing move to a brand new bank.
Surely then this is a very big reason to NOT make it - why make a product that would make people less likely to open a monzo account?
The thing to solve here, to me, is to help people with non monzo accounts more willing to open monzo accounts. Putting time in to help high street banks seems insane - why do their work for them?
I actually think this might have legs. Tom has spoken a few times about being worried that there might be another ‘attack vector’ to disrupt banking that’s better than Monzo’s. WeChat (and Venmo to a lesser extent) have certainly proven that a different model can capture payments - but is that different to banking itself? 
The way I see this is that you’d be able to pay people in a universal way, just by knowing their name / having them in your phone. I don’t use WeChat, but that’s what I understand that does - and it seems to be pretty universal in China.
So, if I’ve understood @albertguo51 correctly, the proposition isn’t so much about Monzo’s payments - but about finding an app / brand / service that could do in the UK what WeChat has done in China.
I wonder if this would be a distraction for Monzo or would be essential to prevent an end-run around it if someone else was successful? Or if any such thing could work in the UK? I wonder why WhatsApp, for example, hasn’t gone in that direction - that’s the closest thing we have to a universal messaging app, I think…
(Quick anecdote: when I first saw ‘Monzo chat’ teased, I did wonder if it was a WeChat-esque test. But no…!)
AFAIK you load money into wechat and then it stays within their ecosystem, I don’t think you can then withdraw it?
Which is fine as most places accept wechat pay, by if they don’t then you can’t use it for anything.
Edit:
So you then have two hurdles, getting people to download it, and getting shops to integrate it.