Direct Debit Spending Notifications

Hi

I always have problems tracking my direct debits and standing orders and have a tendency to overspend. A feature which would notify you if your balance was coming close to the point at which your remaining payments for the month (possibly synced to your payday) would get rejected would be amazing. Is this possible?

I guess it is fairly similar to budgeting but automatically synced to payments due to come out of your account.

2 Likes

Thatā€™s totally in the roadmap :sunglasses:

Many of the things weā€™ve already designed wonā€™t work until we are a bank (currently we canā€™t process direct debits) but what you are suggesting is exactly what we want to offer. Thanks! :heart_eyes:

2 Likes

Like James, Iā€™ve always found it tricky to keep track of outgoings - especially direct debits and standing orders - not to mention the odd unexpected bank charge ā€¦ all of these can play havoc with your finances and put your account in the red.

Many years ago I was paid weekly and found controlling my money a lot easier with that in mind and the knowledge that Mondo or anyone else is not going to swipe money off my card Iā€™ve done the following to get me ahead of the game for 2017:

  1. Divided the amounts I pay annually for each of my main household outgoings by 50 (giving me the potential for perhaps a 2 week ā€˜breakā€™ at Christmas).

  2. Pay one of these each day of the week in value order:
    Monday - Electricity (no gas here)
    Tuesday - Council Tax
    Wednesday - Telephone Landline
    Thursday - Free (at the moment)!
    Friday - Small Charity Donations - Ā£3 each - 4 charities

I make sure my Mondo card is funded at the weekend for the week ahead. (Iā€™m fortunate in not having any housing costs).

  1. I have left in place my existing direct debits for my household expenditure so as not to cause problems and to get me ahead of the game - I appreciate that may not be possible for many ā€¦

I am now feeling much more in control and know I can skip any of these weekly payments if I run short.

It would be great if the Mondo system would ask (as an option you can turn on or off) - ā€œIs this a one off or regular payment?ā€. If you choose the latter then be presented with an option to have this prompted in a future date and you could then either authorise an exact repeat, amend the amount or just select ā€œSkip this timeā€.

2 Likes

Wow, this is really interesting. Weā€™ve explored having recurring payments (the same way that when you define a periodic appointment on a calendar app) but we havenā€™t thought yet about aggregating many of them per day and things like that. Thanks a lot for the cue, weā€™ll explore it :spy:

1 Like

Hugo,

Many thanks for the encouraging response. The only thing I omitted to mention is that I round these payments up to whole pounds (to build in a little surplus) - not that that matters too much in this context.

I hope you guys there donā€™t feel you are being pulled in all directions, but it is great to have a financial organization truly responsive to customersā€™ ideas.

Hopefully there will be plenty you can use without making the App too complicated!

Hi Hugo,

Would it maybe be possible once Mondo has a list of direct debits, to lock in the amount needed to cover all, as soon as your payday comes?

Ie for a 1k income and 200 on direct debits (per month), block those 200 and show them on a separate tab at the top, and show the other 800 as available. that would probably be a really handy feature

Yes, weā€™re considering that concept, call it ā€œput money asideā€ sort of thing. Probably by the time we have some kind of account segregation (jars, pots, envelopes, etc.) we will be able to solve that problem too :slight_smile:

5 Likes

I was at a meetup this evening at Jonas (CTO @ :mondo:) mentioned that banks receive a notification 24 hours before a direct debit is due to be taken from a users account, which blew my mind! Banks could be blocking those payments but instead, theyā€™re allowing them & charging fees when users go into their (planned / unplanned) overdrafts as a result.

The only caveat is, Iā€™m not sure whether blocking the direct debit would impact the userā€™s credit rating.

Either way, itā€™s great that this is obviously something Monzo are thinking about, Iā€™m sure theyā€™ll be able to address it once the current accounts are launched & they can facilitate direct debits (which is on the roadmap).

Ack, I nearly came to that but ended up at the arcade instead. :disappointed:

Thatā€™s a shame, sounds like there will be plenty more though!

You missed out :wink:

I would assume that the Pulse would take into account expected direct debits, so there would already be some information how much money you would have to spend and when. A notification in advance would be perfect though

The Pulse could be improved to show an line/area under the total pulse line which is greyed out for bills/regular payments. As the bill payments go out, the grey area drops. The Pulse could then show two dates, one where you run out of ā€˜freeā€™ spendingā€™ taking into account bills (where the total line would cross into the grey area) AND total money (as per functionality today)

1 Like

I think my suggestion is very close (maybe even the same) to what has been discussed here already so I didnā€™t want to start a new thread.

Every few days/weeks I have a little heart attack when I remember that I forgot to check that I have enough money in my bank account that my bills get paid from.

It would be great if Monzo could ā€˜learnā€™ what day of the month you usually pay what bills and how much they are. Notifications and integration with budgeting, as mentioned above, would be really cool but already only having an up-to-date list would be so helpful! Something along the lines of:

Mobile Contract: Usually Ā£15 on the 15th of every month.
Broadband: Ā£30 during the last week of the month.
etcā€¦

1 Like

Having given this some more thought, I think sending users a notification, if thereā€™s a direct debit thatā€™s due to be taken from their account within the next 24 hours & they have insufficient funds, might be the better solution vs blocking the payment.

That should give some peace of mind to @thejayo (& myself)

If you had this feature, would you still want the list of direct debits in the app?

1 Like

Yes, I think it would be good to still have a list for more visibility and planning in advance for longer than 24 hours.

2 Likes

Would be a better idea if you could set aside enough cash for all DDā€™s that month on a day you choose (most people will be pay day), much like the saving pot ideas that are floating about. Wouldnā€™t be able to spend money ā€œin the potā€ unless you specifically go in and make a decision to move it out.

This is one of the reasons I currently have two current accounts, one for bills and one for spending money to be sure I donā€™t overspend each month, but being able to ringfence cash in a ā€œpotā€ negates the need for this entirely.

2 Likes

Savings pots are definitely on the way, it probably wouldnā€™t hurt to have all three features, given the impact of a direct debit failing due to insufficient funds, on userā€™s credit scores.

I thought Iā€™d share this good-banking-app-saved-me-sneakily-introduced-direct-debit-fee-victory-story with you :+1:

My bank in Luxembourg used to have a terrible app and since I donā€™t really use that account much anymore I didnā€™t pay too much attention to it but theyā€™ve made some major improvement recently :clap:

As I was having a look at their newly updated app a couple of months ago I noticed a ā€˜future movementsā€™ section at the top of the transactions and a Direct Debit that was supposed to go out of my account the following day. Interestingly, the DD was for 1 Euro from Orange but when I signed up to that contract it was sold to me as a ā€˜free for lifetimeā€™ contract :sweat: I havenā€™t had the sim card in my phone for months so it looked like they sneakily introduced a fee in the hope I wonā€™t notice :rage:

Luckily for me there is also a Standing Order & Direct Debit section in the new app, where I can delete and ā€˜lockā€™ direct debits. So I went ahead and locked that DD and itā€™s now effectively saving me one whole euro a month :tada::beers::tada: (until I can be bothered to cancel the contract or get into trouble for not reading the T&Cs :rolling_eyes:)

Itā€™s of course just one euro but it shows what sort of things you can find out (and possible avoid wasting money on things you donā€™t need) if you get more information from your bank. Canā€™t wait for those :monzo: current accounts!

I also quite like the design of their app. It wonā€™t allow me to take screenshots but hereā€™s the link to the app on the playstore for some screenshots :camera:

3 Likes

I had an account with a phone company once and there was a dormant account charge when it was not being used

1 Like

https://www.thinkmoney.co.uk/ does this. Also Squirrel does a similar thing too: https://squirrel.me/

Know this is a little old but just seen this as I was looking to see if monzo would look to do something like this.

HSBC do this albeit very discreetly (if you click into the direct debit screen it will tell you if you have anything leaving the following day along with an amount). Really handy to check in advance, especially if its not a set amount each month.

It is the only thing I miss about using them and hope monzo do something similar.

4 Likes