I totally get where you’re coming from @HoldenCarver.
In theory, there might be a way for us to do something like this - the problem is whether or not such a thing would really work in practice. I for one would love this kind of control over my money, and as a company, it’s no secret that we want you to feel in complete control of your finances. In an ideal world, we could do something like this.
But the problem here is that we’re connecting to global payment processing networks (i.e Mastercard, VISA etc) that we don’t control, so we can’t fundamentally change the way a payment works. It’ll always be made in the following stages:
- Cardholder makes a payment and creates an authorisation.
- Monzo, having approved this authorisation request, moves money from your main balance into an authorisation hold to stop you from spending it twice, make things clearer for you, and make sure the merchant can collect cleared money that doesn’t result in you being taken overdrawn.
- The merchant will make a presentment to collect the money owed usually within 7 days.
We don’t have a mechanism in place whereby tapping on something in-app would move money from your main balance into an authorisation hold - this can only be done following an authorisation request (following a card payment). Could we abstract this in such a way as to give the money the same appearance as having been placed in an authorisation hold? Maybe! I can’t really say for sure, and there may be legitimate technical limitations on doing so, although I definitely see the merits of the idea. Maybe we could creatively use Pots 
With this in mind though, it’s worth remembering that in the grand scheme of things, the vast majority of merchants do collect within 7 days and the only transaction you’ll ever see in your feed is the one that was created at the time you made the payment. Trying to fundamentally change the behaviour of payment processing is a really interesting concept, and if we had the opportunity to tear up the existing scheme and design something from scratch, I’m sure we’d come up with some cool ideas! But since this is such a relatively rare issue, I personally think it would be better approached through design and education, rather than a change that could potentially introduce risks that we aren’t necessarily thinking of right now.
I could imagine something similar to the “Details on ATMs” information button within the transaction detail screen of each ATM transaction you make - it gives you information on how withdrawing cash affects Monzo and why we believe you should use card payments instead where possible; but what if we applied the same button to authorisation reversals in the feed, explaining what has happened in clear detail? I think there’s a strong argument that education around the matter, and allowing the feed to remain as it is now (albeit nicer looking) would fit in really nicely with our goal of giving you complete visibility of your finances. You’re seeing how the payment processing really works, unlike a legacy bank that may not give you this kind of insight.
It’s an interesting topic though, and I’m loving the discussion around this! It’s stuff like this that makes our community so great 