Does Monzo offer a joint account?

duncang · 21 January 2018 23:54

You’ve somewhat engaged with very peripheral points here, rather than treading anywhere near the main thrust of the post.

I think my point about future market demographics is relevant, but either way if you step back from it there is no question whether people are clamouring for joint accounts. This very thread stands as a testament.

Custom timeframes is a bit bigger. Sure, perhaps. But it doesn’t really do much to undermine the core argument. It’s not massive. It’s not going to take a year.

Yup, there is definitely legal complexity around joint accounts. But that is just yet another reason that this should be on the immediate roadmap somewhere.

Here’s the point: it’s worrying that an intrinsic and complex part of the service doesn’t appear to be being addressed at all. I know you tend to be more of a catholic than the pope himself when it comes to Monzo, but tell us honestly, do you really think that everything in that roadmap is more important than addressing the most requested feature? You’re on the forums a lot here. I thought that you would be more inclined to stand up for the issues that you see fellow users raising.

alexs · 22 January 2018 00:10

There’s lots of threads this long about various requests, are you sure it’s the most requested feature? Do know what else needs to be in place in order for Monzo to build the feature? Do you know their priorities (no it’s not as simple as what’s requested most gets built first)?

My point is, we have nowhere near enough information to judge which feature should be prioritised over others. It’s one thing to say “I need this” & you might as well mention that other users do too but to second guess their decision on this, without that knowledge, makes no sense to me.

You can of course but don’t be upset or surprised if it turns out your guess is wrong.

duncang · 22 January 2018 01:14

So, I’m going to answer you twice. Firstly, if you remember I said above:

I find it quite frustrating to try to debate with you on here because almost every answer you give feels like I’m getting MONZO KNOWS BEST. To wit:

MONZO KNOWS BEST

Perhaps you can see how this approach can appear very much like stonewalling.

Secondly, I'll engage with what little is left:

From my first post on this: it has been requested over and over again here on the forums since time immemorial. But the most compelling evidence can be found by just searching the ideas forum by post count.

As for the rest: Yes, we do know their priorities! They’re a matter of public record in their blog post and transparent roadmap. We don’t need full information of the inner workings of Monzo to have an opinion on whether their roadmap seems sensible from a user perspective. I absolutely think that it is sensible to second guess it. Monzo want feedback from their users, and that’s exactly what I am providing. And I think what Monzo don’t want is for all their engaged forum users to resign themselves to “MONZO KNOWS BEST”.

nanos · 22 January 2018 07:48

I would really challange this notion. Why? I’m not a lawyer, but my understanding from my lawyer friend is that joint accounts are the simplest, most straight forward way to share assets. That’s the whole point of a joint account, that the assets and liabilities of the two parties are no longer distinct. They belong to each party severally, and to both parties jointly. It’s that simple. (Of course, if Monzo insist on implementing some weird shared pots half baked workaround rather than actual joint accounts, then that probably comes with legal complications.)

alexs · 22 January 2018 07:59

That reply says it all good luck with your campaign! And remember

Oh &

maybe I should have said objectives / strategy etc. in other words, the types of things I was talking about were; how much of a priority is user migration, how much of a priority is growth, how much is revenue & 100 other things, instead of -

My bad. But anyway really that’s just me saying

“MONZO KNOWS BEST”.

alexs · 22 January 2018 08:20

Maybe. Does them being the simplest make them simple though?

It looks like they’re going to (like Starling), although if they’re taking this approach you’d hope that, that makes them easier to set up wouldn’t you?

This isn’t my opinion btw, it was a comment from one of the team.

nanos · 22 January 2018 08:36

For the reasons that I outlined above: I believe so. If you know something that I don’t know, then please enlighten me. I love to learn. But if your only response to a question (remember, I asked “why?” above) sounds like “I know something that you don’t know, but I don’t want to tell you ”, and “monzo says so, so it must be true” then I’m out of this discussion…

So, to repeat the question : why are joint accounts not simple? Can you tell me?

alexs · 22 January 2018 08:37

I’m not a lawyer, I can’t debate this, I’m just passing on what I told. If you want to believe they’re easy, that’s fine by me

My only suggestion is, ask your lawyer friend how many different scenarios there are that need to be handled where the account needs to be closed?

anon81274823 · 22 January 2018 08:52

I don’t really care. I am just a man in the street looking for a bank account. The only thing that I find attractive is not being gouged on foreign transactions. However, the deal breaker for myself is the lack of joint account facilities. Monzo chose to come to the market with a far from complete offering maybe because they wanted in house processing. They have made some money from me in debit card transactions but I have cost them money by having 3 cards, using top ups and drawing cash both here and abroad. I assume that one of reasons for providing an official forum is to gauge customer feeling, demand and needs. There is a large demand for joint accounts from the average customer who isn’t a millenial living in London. I couldn’t care less if Monzo survives or fails but there is a fair bit of feedback on these pages and Monzo is free to do as it wishes.

anon95680666 · 22 January 2018 09:07

In fairness JA are important to some and of no importance to others , just like apple pay , and setting target dates , being able to have personalised colours instead of hot coral etc etc etc - all being “deal breakers” to some

Starling are having the exact same discussions on their forum over the last couple of months, with similar solutions i.e. shared goals / pots being offered by Starling as the JA solution, along with @anon44204028 offering some legal problems in that thread to ownership and access to funds in JAs

Presumably if it was a simple solution both Starling and Monzo would be implementing it - I don’t think they are just being awkward MONZO KNOWS BEST or indeed STARLING KNOWS BEST by not prioritising it

I use Monzo for all my personal spending and have a joint account with the Co-op for household bills - I wouldn’t use the Co-op for my personal spending - I would like to use Monzo for household bills but cant until they offer the solution - I need two cards linked to the Monzo “joint” account, as access to the joint funds in / at separate locations / times is important

duncang · 22 January 2018 09:23

Not exactly. If you don’t have a custom coloured card your banking experience still works. If you don’t have Apple Pay your banking experience still works. But if your rent, bills, food, and holidays are all joint account expenses, then it totally breaks your banking experience.

No, the MONZO KNOWS BEST commentary was about the monochrome replies from @alexs and have nothing to do with what Monzo themselves have said.

anon95680666 · 22 January 2018 09:26

I don’t have a Monzo Joint Account , yet the banking “experience” still works for me - in that I have used it for over 2 years for all my day to day spending - I know exactly how much I spend in my joint account on bills , so Monzo does exactly what I want it to do , i.e. keep tabs on all my personal expenditure - with the exception of joint bills , and setting dates for targets (also not important to me personally) , and taking off credits from debits in targets ( quite important to me ) , and … , like I said JA are important for some and unimportant for others - yes I would like to have all my expenditure in one place rather than having to add up different accounts

“But if your rent, bills, food, and holidays are all joint account expenses, then it totally breaks your banking experience.” - for me… they aren’t …so it doesnt break my “banking experience”

nanos · 22 January 2018 10:04

That’s at least a hint to an answer. Thank you. Any further insights would be appreciated.

alexs · 22 January 2018 10:08

I’ve told you everything I know

kennygrant · 22 January 2018 11:49

Thanks for the thread. I too would like Joint Accounts from Monzo (or even multiple accounts). Hurdles I can see on the way to getting there:

Multiple accounts - Monzo simply doesn’t support this, this would probably be a major reorg both UI-wise and on the backend, they appear to have assumed users would have one account!
Multiple users of the same account - a similar level of work and complexity
Legal stuff - personally I don’t see this as a huge hurdle for simple UK joint accounts, but it probably has some impact, esp. as they expand internationally

I’d expect to see one or two of those ticked off before they even consider joint accounts (for example multiple accounts would be useful for other reasons, like a savings account). Do the other challenger banks offer joint accounts yet? I do like the tide setup for multiple accounts, which is as you’d expect, but they are for business only. They are just thinking of rolling out accounts/cards for multiple people based on this (similar to joint accounts).

The pots idea I find worrying in many ways as it looks like they’re trying to avoid the concept of multiple accounts, let’s hope they are just a stop-gap or a step on the way. With open banking I guess it’s possible that even before proper joint accounts, Monzo might offer access to the feed from other accounts within the app? That would require at least point 1 above though. We have pots now so they’ll probably be forced to consider them full accounts at some point - people will start to ask for transfers in, separate transactions, and separate cards for pots, at which point you have a separate account.

It’s interesting though because it sounds like I have exactly the same setup as you (as does iansilversides upthread), and it doesn’t really bother me that I have a joint account with another bank (shared with my wife), and my own account at Monzo - which still has plenty of activity. Yes it’d be nice to use Monzo for the joint account, but I’d first have to be very confident it was completely reliable (probably 1 year from now at least), and then I’d have to persuade my wife to change it too, for no particularly good reason except I’d like to categorise spending - that could be a hard sell. So at the minute things like grocery spend, mortgage etc are not categorised within monzo, and I have one lump sum going out from my account to the joint every month, but I like them kept separate and would not consider having just one joint account, so it’s more a failing of my old bank where the joint account is.

I honestly find it far more annoying that there are very limited categories in Monzo for current spending, but do sympathise that if most of your spending is on joint, it renders your monzo account pretty redundant and means you can’t properly look at your spending without using several apps. Our joint account runs pretty much on autopilot for us - it has Direct Debits set up, and we transfer money in every month, food spending is the only unpredictable bit, but we keep a float for that. It would be nice to categorise it all in detail I guess though the spending is pretty consistent - but I’m not sure Monzo categories and spending reports are up to that task yet anyway given the limited categories. I’m used to using several apps so nothing feels too broken, just the way it was, but it would certainly be nice long term to bring joint spending into Monzo.

For what it’s worth, I did a little poll of 500 members here recently and joint accounts was ranked 5th, so it is up there amongst the most requested features, but probably Apple Pay and a few other substantial things are higher (personally that’s not high for me, but it’s important to recognise there are a huge number of conflicting demands, many of which will take significant investment of time). They also have the distraction of the CA rollout, the open banking APIs, and a possible launch in the US for growth (speculation on my part).

So I can sympathise with Monzo here - they are building a full-stack bank and cannot afford to slip up on the way, which means they’re going to be a bit slower than perhaps we’re used to from consumer apps. Due to all the factors above, and the omission from the road map, it doesn’t look to me like joint accounts will come this year, much as I’d like to see them.

duncang · 22 January 2018 12:53

I couldn’t have said it better myself

I was about to reply to something you said but sadly you deleted the post. You said “to be clear I’d hope that if enough users request this feature then Monzo would consider re-prioritising it”. Well, that’s basically how I feel. But they won’t know unless we shout about it!

alexs · 22 January 2018 12:56

They already knew before you started this thread. I’m pretty sure you mentioned that you need joint accounts elsewhere? You get one vote just like everyone else, posting about it again makes zero difference.

duncang · 22 January 2018 13:06

So, I feel like a broken record by this point because you seem to refuse to engage with the point at all. But, once again: if you read through the above posts there is a detailed breakdown of Monzo’s 2018 Plans blog post, and information on the large numbers of people who have requested this. The details are all there if you want to revisit and engage with them. If you have something more than MONZO KNOWS BEST to contribute than please do reply. Otherwise, I’m out.

garete · 22 January 2018 14:23

(Don’t mention 70% of participants said they didn’t need it as a Top 5 feature)

Here’s a random list to inspire new conversation, sorry if there’s repeats but 260 is a lot of posts to read

Would you want a simple sign-up system, like bumping phones together (if both have a single acc)
Do you want to keep your own account or convert it?
Would you want yours/their/dd filters? In transactions and spending? Joint targets or individual?
What about notifications?
Would you want a shortcut to transfer money to/from your personal account?
Would you want more than two people for an account?
Would you want rules for pots set up first (so direct debits are more manageable)
Why are you after joint accounts before overdraft has been fully rolled out and direct debits improved??? Someone is going to forget to top up the account and it will reject a payment and that’s needless hassle.
Some people split the costs unevenly, should the app help you with that? E.g. a bill comes in, it tells you 70% is this much, tracks for who’s paid in their percentage (optional ofc)
Would you want individual pots (ordered so yours are shown first, maybe summarised as under Other pots to the others)?
How is location security affected? Card freezing (would you want the ability to freeze the other’s card [if their card and phone were stolen] - maybe only with their pin)?

duncang · 22 January 2018 19:54

I think that you may have got the idea of a literal Joint Account, but likely Monzo will put a different spin on this (some modification of pots, as you note, has been suggested) so I don’t think that multiple accounts and multiple users on the same account are pre-requisites for some version of a Joint Account. I suspect that Monzo will solve this in a smart way without the need for the old metaphors. However, I use the term Joint Account because we don’t know how that new concept will look yet. Number 3, “legal stuff”, is obviously mandatory.

Yeah, that’s the other gaping sore - and also not on the roadmap!

Yup. Makes it pretty hard to use Monzo usefully. Basically renders it back into a day-to-day spending card for lunches and the tube.

Nice poll. Exactly what I was hoping to see! A couple of comments:

(1st) I bet if there were fixed periodic pots top-ups this would have fewer votes.
(2nd) Lack of Apple Pay is irritating, but this lack doesn’t break the core experience.
(3rd) Monzo won’t be offering savings accounts with interest (last I checked).

So perhaps Joint Accounts fared better than at first glace. Either way, it’s still pretty far up there. And most importantly, it really breaks the experience.

I actually thought that Monzo would prioritise Joint Accounts as it’s in their own best interests. For those many people who need one they are basically missing out on all the data that they could be getting - all the bills direct debits etc. Just a thought.