Direct Debits & Standing Orders (recurring payments) Feedback

[SC95]

I have been on current account preview for few weeks and now migrated to the normal Monzo app and closed prepay. I have had my direct debits and standing orders with Monzo to test everything properly. Now that most of my direct debits have gone out at least twice I have some comments and the things which I would like to see;

• DDs need logos. I have some DDs with well-known brands, for example, O2 but the logos are missing for all. I have paid O2 with debit card and logo is there
• On recurring payment screen last payment amount, last payment date and DD reference should be displayed
• DDs history is missing and should be like debit card transactions - So if I have paid a DD more than once history should be there in the payment details
• If a particular category is assigned to a So app should keep these details for the next payments and automatically assign payment to previously assigned just like debit card transaction.

There have been quite a few other suggestions by the community I am going to collect those all here because I agree with most of those;

Friendly names for Direct Debits

Here’s an idea, not sure if it goes here or in “ideas”, or if it has already been suggested. I now have a couple of direct debits showing in my Recurring Payments - clicking on them does not show anything - I assume it will show some sort of payment information once the first payment has been made? Anyway, it would be good to be able to rename them to something more friendly - whereas “CAPITA BUS SVS re TV LICENSING” could just become “Quarterly TV License”. Just a thought…

Notify on New Direct Debit

I would love to have a little notification when a new direct debit has been setup under my account. It would also be nice to maybe see the direct debit in the feed saying something along the lines of “Direct Debit for EE Setup & Active”, something along them lines

Direct Debit failure notice - 3 days early

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”.

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.

Enhanced Direct Debit...but super enhanced

I know there is a lot about DDs been enhanced with the normal merchant data but what about the next level of enhanced. I’ve clicked on one this morning and actually I could do with changing the date of the Direct Debit and without thinking about it I hit “Contact Customer Service”. Now wouldn’t it be cool if you could have that enhanced and it asks “Monzo Bank Support or Direct Debit owner support” and a call could be fired off to the retailer just by me hitting contact customer support?

Direct Debit Notes

With payments, you can add a photograph, or a one-line note. I would really like to be able to record some notes (multiple lines) such as account numbers, start and end dates, support telephone numbers, etc. Would also be very nice to be able to leave multi-line notes instead of a single one-line note for entries in the card-payments view, but that’s an aside. Currently clicking on a direct-debit literally pops open a dialog with a single button saying “CANCEL DIRECT DEBIT”, which is nice and…

Contract end dates for Direct Debits

Another idea for when Monzo becomes a bank account would be the ability to add contract end dates to direct debits, linked to getting custom alerts on reaching them. Also access to see direct debits in order of contract end dates.

Exportable cash flow for standing orders and Direct debits

I have just spent a morning preparing a 12 month cash flow analysis based on direct debits and standing orders. It would be really really helpful if the current account had an exportable report which showed the amounts flowing out each month for each DD and SO over a 12 month period. Mine range from monthly to annual with a couple that have payments only on 10 months (council tax). Monzo must capture this detail when SOs are set up. I assume they will capture similar detail on DDs when they…

Pots

Aside from putting money aside virtually how is this managed? Say I want to move £100 aside for direct debits to not spend it. Come direct debit due date how does it know it’s for that purpose? Would the direct debit take the money from the ‘pot’ or the regular section of the account. Do I need to move it back or is it automated? I keep seeing “no plans to allow second accounts”(which seems silly) and also that as a new bank you wanted to come up with new solutions and pots has been cited as …

[adam.williams]

@alisufyan

DDs need logos. I have some DDs with well-known brands, for example, O2 but the logos are missing for all. I have paid O2 with debit card and logo is there

I believe the issue with missing merchant logos is known?

[anon23935806]

I don’t think those are related - merchant logos for card payments is a known issue but merchant logos for direct debits have never been there in the first place and the systems are completely different so they can’t easily reuse the info they have from card payments to identify DD’s.

[adam.williams]

Interestingly my DDs to Online.net for a dedicated server seem to display a nice logo and name. Bulb is … less pretty - I think this is mostly GoCardless’s fault though for using a shared SUN and just putting the merchant name in the reference which is a bit hacky.

[SC95]

@adam.williams

I believe the issue with missing merchant logos is known?

I am just trying to highlight things around DDs and SOs and collecting them in one thread. I know Monzo plan to update UX and @tom acknowledged that here;

Direct Debit list

Yes, the user-interface has been a bit neglected so far - we were initially focussing on ensuring the money moved correctly! There’s a tonne of useful stuff we should be able to do with Direct Debits, standing orders and recurring card payments. @Jami is the Product Manager who’ll be focussing on this.

I just want to collect the feedback so we can steer and influence the changes Maybe @Jami can let us know how he is getting on and when will we see updates around these.

[Frankiejr (Frank)]

This is a great summary and collection of enhancements. I completely agree with all of them. With my current bank I can see pending payments but I have to log in to see if there are any. Monzo just doing the same would be super helpful but also sending out a notification would be even more impressive.

[Feathers (MikeF)]

My issue with this is that I want to see what Monzo have to offer, not what vocal users want them to offer. Steering them is the last thing I want this community to be doing!

[SC95]

Steering them is exactly what I believe the community is supposed to do and actually does - If Monzo did not want our input or feedback to steer them there would have been no poll for ATM charges, Even the Monzo name was chosen by the community.
Steering is not dictating.

[Frankiejr (Frank)]

If you mean you think Monzo have no ideas what to do and we are giving them the ideas then I feel this is unlikely.

I see no downside to community members offering up suggestions they they believe will better functionality. It is then for Monzo to look at these suggestions and consider if they believe they are worth progressing and implementing.

[Feathers (MikeF)]

That’s fine. Opinion and ideas are what we’re here for. Steering generally implies more than that, however, since it describes an element of control that I don’t want to see in the community.

[Jami (Jami Welch)]

Hey,

Adding logos and more readable names to Direct Debit merchants is on our list, but won’t be something we work on until the upgrade process for the current account is feeling smooth.

[SC95]

Don’t think logos bother me much at the mo, I know they will be sorted but seeing details of DDs is something which helps me budget - So if I click on a direct debit I can’t see the payment history. (i.e. by clicking a Sainsbury’s card transaction I can see the all previous ones)
I found another sort of bug today that some DDs have history but you cant actually tap to see the payment details. And some DDs don’t even have that; See below screenshots - Thames Water DD shows history but Hyperoptic has nothing

[jrmurray86 (James Murray-Ferris)]

Wow the android app is actually further ahead to the iOS CA preview app atm

[ChrisBeldam]

I agree that the DD names and logo’s definitely need looking at. I would find it incredibly difficult to know what my DD were for if I had more than a couple as they come through as raw data. I know Monzo is focused on making the switch to the current account but I would have thought this was something they’d want to be in place for when they migrate everyone over

[uktexan (Geoffrey McCaleb)]

Good suggestions here. A few more:

1. Tagging doesn’t work generally in the app, but DD an SO’s should be an easy win here. For example, when I tag a DD or SO as a bill, it should remember that forever. It forces you to retag every month which is frustrating
2. Known issue, but you should be able to view the billing details for an SO. Right now, you just see the recipient name, the amount, and what date it went out
3. Ideally, for SO’s you should be able to change: the amount, the date it goes out, view/edit the billing details, or perhaps to pause it

[SC95]

When setting up a Standing Order with an end date, App does not currently show the year so it looks bit confusing imo.

[Rosie]

I just got my first D/D set up (Android) and really don’t like the way it is presented.

Naively I had assumed that tapping on the direct debit would bring up more details about it, not put me within one mis-tap of cancelling it!

I think you should be able to tap on the direct debit, which then brings up more info, including an option to cancel (which should have at least one “are you sure?” option to back out after clicking cancel)

[ASKendrew (Adam K.)]

I believe enriching the direct debit data is on the roadmap. I think @tristan said it would work similar to how we submit feedback for normal transactions. So I presume when the ability to do that is live they’ll improve on the flow of cancelling etc too.

[Feathers (MikeF)]

At the moment, this is the functionality that was put together quickly to get the preview Current Accounts up and running. It’s just enough to make the recurring payments useable.

The ‘proper’ functionality intended for long term use is still away in the future.

[Beky]

Hi Rosie, I agree these screens need some work on Android - and I’m sure that will be coming ️ - but just to let you know you can’t accidentally cancel the DD with one click, it takes you to a confirmation screen where you have to enter your pin to action the cancellation (or you can return to the previous screen). Hope that helps ️