I’ve just been through this process, making a large payment for a deposit on a house purchase. Here’s my experience. TL;DR: good!
I sold my house in February and stashed some of the proceeds in a pot in Monzo to take advantage of their FSCS protection. (The remainder of the proceeds were put in a building society savings account and left in my legacy HSBC current account — spread it around!)
I’ve been negotiating the purchase of my next house for some time, but I thought it wasn’t going to go through until late July until the sellers surprised me on Tuesday by suggesting a completion date before the end of June. I was on holiday, camping in Norfolk, so cue lots of flailing around to get ready to exchange contracts as soon as possible!
I arranged to see my solicitors to sign the contract, transfer form, etc. as soon as possible on Wednesday. Fortunately they were only in Cambridge, about 1.5 hours away. I contacted Monzo via in-app chat on Tuesday to arrange to send the money for the deposit to the solicitors at short notice.
The chat started quite late in the working day, and went:
Me: Tomorrow (Wednesday) I need to send the
$large_amountthat is currently in a pot in my account by Faster Payments to another bank account. Can you help me with this?
Monzo 1: Hi Stephen
Before we increase your limits temporarily, can you please let me know:
- How much is the payment?
- What the payment’s for?
- How you’re planning to make the payment (e.g. via card or bank transfer - if it’s the latter, please send through the Sort Code and Account Number for the destination account too)?
- When you’re planning on making the payment?
Bear in mind increasing your limit temporarily will take 1 working day to complete
Once you’ve answered the above, can you please also send through a selfie photo holding up a photo ID? I can then let you know if we can raise your limits!
Thanks!
I replied:
Me: Additional answers (the rest of the answers are in the original question): deposit for a house purchase, and the payment is going to
$payee_namefrom my recent payees.
Monzo 1: Thanks Stephen, but could you please confirm what those details are please in this chat. We really appreciate that!
A little bit of cut-and-paste was in order:
Me: Tomorrow (Wednesday) I need to send the
$large_amountthat is currently in a pot in my account by Faster Payments to another bank account.
I also needed to supply the sort code and account number: it wasn’t apparent whether the COps could see my recent payees. It didn’t go smoothly: I was in a field in North Norfolk at the time…
Me: Just a mo - cutting and pasting
Me: Argh, can’t copy and paste from recent payees, trying to find a pen
I borrowed a pen and a scrap of paper, and wrote down the sort code and account number from the completion statement sent by the solicitors.
Me: (sort code) (account number)
Me: (selfie with driving licence, in the middle of a field)
I went back and looked at the recent payees in Monzo. I’d paid the solicitors an initial £400 to cover searches a couple of months ago. The account number was the same but the sort code didn’t match!
Me: Hmm. Actually, the sort code may be sort code from recent payees instead - that’s the one I used last time. I’ll contact the solicitors again to confirm.
Monzo 2: Great! Thanks. Do come back to us to confirm.
Me: I will confirm when I speak to the solicitors in person tomorrow (I have to go to sign the contract, etc.). I will need to make the payment immediately after that.
Monzo 2: Hi. Unfortunately we need to preauthorise this for you Stephen so we really need you to confirm the information asap for us, if that’s possible?
As my colleague Monzo 1 mentioned earlier, this normally takes 1 working day to authorise. But I’ll do my best if you can send the information over now?
What time are you going to need to transfer the money tomorrow?
We were well into the evening at this point.
Me: The solicitors aren’t answering my email at the moment - I suspect they have finished work for the day! I will be seeing them around lunchtime tomorrow. They might answer my email asking them to check the sort code tomorrow morning, or they might just wait to see me. (They have been quite bad at responding to email, unfortunately.)
Monzo 2: Could you call them first thing perhaps, as I say we really do ask for a day’s notice so I would like to get this request in tonight, so that they see it first thing.
I can make a note that we’re waiting for the sort code confirmation.
Me: I will call them in the morning.
Monzo 2: Great! Let us know if we can help with anything else, otherwise have a lovely evening
So, off to sleep in the tent and call the solicitors at 9am in the morning!
Me: I’ve called the solicitors. They confirmed that the sort code has changed, and that new sort code is now correct.
Part of the great Barclays sort code renumbering!
Monzo 3: Hey Stephen
Thanks so much for coming back to us on this, I will pass this on to the relevant time [sic] right away!
At this point I drove to Cambridge. The phone rang while I was driving, but I didn’t answer it because I was driving. I saw the solicitors, signed things, and retired to the pub where the phone rang again. It was Monzo, calling from a withheld number: I was asked how much the payment was, what it was for, and who it was being made to and was told that my payment limits would be increased for the next 24 hours and I should wait for confirmation of this in-app before making the payment.
Monzo 4: Hi there Stephen,
I’ve just checked with my colleague Monzo 3? and your limits have now been increased, so you will be able to make the payment anytime within the next 24 hours.You can see your limits in the app settings section of your app - this link (internal link) will take you straight there!
Alternatively head over to the “Account” tab and on iOS tap on “Settings”, on Android tap on the cog on the top right of your screen. Finally, tap on “Spending and top up limits” to see your limits!
If there’s anything else, just let us know.
Regards
Monzo 4
I made the payment, making sure I used the new sort code and account details!
Me: That appears to have gone through ok, thank you. I’m just waiting for confirmation from the solicitors that they have received it.
Monzo 5: That’s brilliant! Let us know if we can help you with anything else at all.
Early on the next day, the solicitors confirmed they had received $large_amount.
How did this go? Generally very smoothly! After the initial annoyance of providing lots of details only to be asked for them again, I was very happy with the way the interaction went. The issue of the changing sort code was handled sensibly: it’s obviously a thing to worry about, because sending large amounts by Faster Payments to unauthenticated destination accounts is an obvious vehicle for scams. Checking the details directly with the payee is sensible.
Once the increase in outbound Faster Payments limit was authorised, it wasn’t clear whether the increased limit would only apply to payments to the pre-arranged sort code and account number, or to all Faster Payments. I didn’t test this! 
On the whole, I would prefer that the increased limit only applies to the pre-arranged destination account to help prevent both mistakes and fraud. I don’t know if this is technically possible at the moment.
Am I happy with the service from Monzo? Yes. I was able to make a large Faster Payment, within 24 hours of initially requesting it. (I think it was about 21 hours in the end, but could have been sooner if I had answered the phone when they initially called me.)
Would I have been in trouble if Monzo had not been able to help? No, my backup plan was to make the payment from my HSBC current account. I might have had to visit a branch to do this. I’m very glad I didn’t have to! I have that dubious pleasure scheduled for next week, to transfer the balance for the house purchase by CHAPS.