Hi, I had a notification (and line in my transaction history) this morning of failed Direct Debit due to insufficient funds. The Direct Debit wasn’t supposed to happen until Monday, so I called my mortgage provider and asked them why they’d tried to take it early. They responded that they’d only given notice today, and that the actual payment would be taken Monday.
I feel it would have been helpful for the notification I received from Monzo to be clearer. Is this something that might be fixed?
Hmm that would be irritating to happen every month. Then again it’s a reminder to put the money in!
Perhaps it would be better to have it like that - a reminder:
“Hey there’s a DD coming out Monday and it looks like right now you don’t have the funds available. You’ll need £XXX for this DD to clear”.
Highlights one of the only minor downsides to processing things at the speed of data! Hopefully, Monzo can take that data and use it to give you early notification as @coffeemadman suggests.
It could cause people a lot of issues if they get paid on the last day of the month but have a lot of payments on the 1st like rent and mortgages though?
No more than the same number of “Failed” DD notices!
Now I understand what happened, So long as I know that they will be trying to withdraw funds on the correct due date, i don’t think this need be a bad experience at all.
I feel if the content of the notification were changed, it could be very useful. For example: “You have a Direct Debit for £500 to Lloyds Bank scheduled on Monday. There are currently sufficient/insufficient funds available”
Yes, exactly!
I could see that being very useful
Something also to bear in mind, that during the preview, “Direct Debit payments will leave your account one day earlier than they should.” This is in the help section of the app if you haven’t seen it already.
I know Monzo are also working on marking recurring payments more ‘user friendly’. Exactly how that will look, we don’t know yet.
CPA is a continuous payment authority - something that the likes of Netflix and Spotify use - like a direct debit, but taken from your card details instead.
@tomsr, thanks for the warning. I’d only spotted this earlier today, and it was only the fact that pay day is a couple of days early this month (due to the regular one being on a weekend) that alleviated the issue!
Nationwide send a text message to advise on the day of payment (dd or so) if your account is short of funds to advise how much is being taken and also giving you a deadline time (2.30pm) to make the payment. It’s quite handy and means that you’ve time to transfer funds into the account. Whilst it doesn’t give you a balance of your account at the same time (which would of course be handy) at least you know how much you need to transfer in, doing something like this would be a really useful thing on the Monzo account so that if you haven’t moved everything across from your legacy bank in the first instance you’d be able to react immediately to transfer the funds across
I’ve just chatted with the team that looks after this stuff and they’ve got a fix ready to ship on Monday
Thank you for following up. What a great result 
- I’ve got plenty of Direct Debits going out over the coming couple of weeks, so look forward to trying out the app update. Thanks again 
Just moving my first ones over now so I’ll be interested to watch how this plays out. The thing First Direct does now is display the p’pending’ transactions in the main display in the app but I still feel this approach sounds to be one step (or two) ahead.
Hi Justin!
To add to what Tom said, if you are able to add the funds to your account over the weekend (if you haven’t already) then the Direct Debit will be processed as normal on Monday, otherwise it will fail for insufficient funds.
The fix being shipped next week should address correct day processing, i.e. direct debits won’t be attempted a day early as they are now.
As for the suggestion to provide a warning of outgoing direct debits a day early, it’s one of the things I’d like to see most and is very much on the roadmap.
Have an awesome weekend 
Hey Will
Thanks. That’s all done now. That had been the original source of my concern, before I saw the opportunity for the current notification to be repurposed to warn.
Thanks for the additional clarity. I look forward to experiencing the alerts as you continue to evolve the service
Does this mean payroll will also go in on the intended date 
Really surprised that Nationwide does this as it’s in their best interest to reject DD’s to collect huge fees.
I think it’s been a bug bare of many people and they finally addressed it a couple of months ago; you do, of course, have to allow notifications from them and make sure the mobile number they have for you is up to date but I think this is part of them ‘trying’ to foister the ‘caring’ image they lost a while back when they started charging for overseas withdrawals etc after all of those adverts they had telling people they weren’t like other banks only to shaft their members good and proper by changing their t’s & c’s
What, like Monzo will?
Most Legacy banks do this. A direct debit can be marked to the account at least 2 business days before it is paid. Some banks will refuse if funds are not cleared by the end of the previous day and some right up to 4pm the day it will be paid.
It’s good to hear that Monzo is adapting to reflect the actual business day.