Direct Debits & Standing Orders (recurring payments) Feedback

I’m surprised the DDs are such a big issue. Sure, it might catch you off-guard the first time but once you’re aware of this limitation you can plan for it?

1 Like

Yes you are able to plan for direct debits, but as I didn’t check what day it was going out properly I thought there was enough money on the account. As it was a savings account and an overall test from my perspective, I didn’t take it much further than that.

Other ways to reduce the issue would be either scheduling money to come out of pots before hand, or the direct debit coming straight out of a pot. I would prefer the latter as the money stays fenced off for its purpose.

2 Likes

That assumes that the company originating the DD can/will change the date, a lot will not, e.g. NFU Mutual, Vision Express, The Times, NewDay and probably many more.

It’s probably a mixture of badly designed systems and laziness on their part but this is something that Monzo needs to cater for, there should be a grace period of hours to pay in money and still have the DD honoured.

Before someone says that Monzo does not charge fees for returned DDs, that’s true and it is great but it misses the point that the payee will often charge you and may record a missed payment marker on your credit report.

Saying that people can plan around this assumes that they are budgeting properly, many people are not otherwise they wouldn’t be such great fee-generating machines for banks to profit from. Monzo wants to help people on low income and tight budgets, this is something they should improve.

2 Likes

Unfortunately mortgage payments is a different matter as is financial agreements on car purchase
To have those simply moved can incur additional interest charges
So when you phoned up to have the DD payment simply moved was that for a mortgage or a car loan ?
The point is being missed again and again.
Simple banking practice by an organisation that wants to call itself a futuristic bank, is unable to get the basics right just now
What we then see is an attempt to fudge the issue by telling the users to make the changes instead of the bank
It’s great to see and read as we are trying to get the bank to get things right not the customer

5 Likes

Yeah, telling the customer you don’t see the problem, they’ll only be caught once and it’s their issue…that will work great with scaling ambitions.

4 Likes

NewDay is not just Debenhams. For their Amazon Mastercard they will not change the DD date.

1 Like

I think you’re being argumentative for the sake of it. My points are valid and still stand. That’s all I’ll say on the subject.

2 Likes

This might be be seen as arguing for the sake of it - if so sorry. I just want to round off the issue with Direct Debits (DD) and the potential solutions in my opinion.

Problem: DD not retrying

  • Solution 1: Make sure enough money is in the main account
  • Solution 2: Move DD to make it more plausible that money is in the account
  • Solution 3: Payment of DD from Pot and make sure money is in pot for payment
  • Solution 4: Scheduled payments from pots
  • Solution 5: Allow a retry of DD payments at a specific time later in the day

Solutions 1 and 2 are solutions that place responsibility mainly on the user
Solution 4 requires implementation from monzo and action from the user to setup the scheduled payment
Solution 5 requires implementation from monzo
Solution 3 is a mix where it requires implementation from Monzo and the user to make sure that the pot is always filled with enough money for DD payments

I think solution 3 is the most elegant due to it fencing off money into a pot which means the main balance is still a ‘this is what I have left after bills’. The solution also disregards what day the DD comes out of the account if you use the pot to store the money used for DDs. To keep the monzo feed and other stuff correct though, you’d probably need to still have one or two feed items to say that the money has gone out as expected.

I’m not sure why this is so complicated. Just do DDs the same way as all of the existing banks.

2 Likes

No…they can’t because blah blah “legacy”…etc.

But in reality, you are correct.

1 Like

I find my card DDs are out of cycle with my salary. Plus I’m lazy, so the 2k free overdraft FD give me means I can simply respond to the current account going overdrawn (I get a text message) by moving money from savings accounts.

I don’t want my DDs to bounce but I don’t want to pay overdraft charges. I get both with FD, neither with monzo.

Hence I’m likely to keep the FD account for a while.

3 Likes

Having Direct Debits (DD) fail and not retried is the main reason I haven’t gone with Monzo as my main bank. Luckily the only DD I have had on the account is one for a savings account so I did the transfer over Faster Payments instead. Still is annoying though.

9 Likes

I’m not moving over until the DD and overdraft issues have been resolved

The CASS issue is also something on my list that needs to happen first

You are right but this should be an automated process that happens without having to keep checking that all is well
Something that I would expect the bank to do for its customers not the other way round
We are talking about hours rather than days here
And in my case not having an overdraft, we have an element of unecessary risk

1 Like

Same here. I’ve never understood why people don’t do this, unless their income is irregular

3 Likes

For me the issue is with standing orders when the other bank is down, they need to be retried

So I’m a little obsessed with Pots to help my pay each month stretch across the month, and budget more sensibly - but in doing so, my active balance on the card sometimes falls under what is needed for direct debits, and they end up declining.

Rather than me having an awareness of when these payments are due to come out, I wondered if there was any way of having a warning in the home screen that a direct debit is due to take place “tomorrow”. I feel like I’ve seen a notification once or twice come up, but the Android notification gets cut off and I can’t see the full wording - and it doesn’t always notify me ahead of direct debits.

Is it possible to have these as an item in the feed perhaps, as a reminder of a payment to come the following day?

4 Likes

Good idea. A notification is transient, your proposal would complement them nicely

2 Likes

I think you’ll find that’s the plan with the spending redesign:

2 Likes

Not sure if this has already been suggested, but can there be an option added to set up quarterly standing orders, or better still a custom field for the regularity?

2 Likes