Well, Monzo, and Tom in particular, have made it clear in the past, that they consider true joint accounts outdated. A cludge. That they’d want to not introduce them at all, but rather build something fantastic from the ground up,through shared pots.
And I guess if you want to reinvent the wheel, then you need some time for that.
That actually sounds interesting. Why build a new bank but build it around existing products, doesn’t make sense. Don’t suppose you have a link or was it in a talk?
From what I’ve been told, monzo are more likely todo joint pot’s rather than a joint account, but join accounts are on the roadmap. I guess we’ll only know when they post a blog about it.
Check out the other joint account threads, it’s somewhere in there.
Suffice it to say, that I’m less enthusiastic about this than you seem to be: unless the legal construct of a joint account can be maintained through Monzo’s shared pots, I see no values in it. And if, on the other hand, joint pots end up being equivalent to joint accounts, I see no point in reinventing the wheel.
But we’ll see, I guess…
PROBATE! Without joint accounts most won’t commit much more than their daily spend. I am frankly astounded that there’s so little understanding of that.
Yes, it’s difficult.
There we go again…
You’d better run along and tell Tom Blom that he’s doing it all wrong then mate.
Thanks Nanos. There sure is a lot of posts on it! Have yet to find out why it is ‘hard’ to create but I’m sure I’ll find the answer in the corect forum post shortly.
I don’t think you will find the answer to that question. It has never been answered…
Since you asked nicely 
here’s my attempt at answering that question -
TL;DR there’s lots of legal complexity.
Also, Monzo have talked about shared Pots being used for a variety of use cases, not just your traditional joint accounts e.g. by flatmates pooling money for bills which could make them more difficult to set up.
The caveat there is Monzo tends to come out with an MVP that covers 80% of the use case & then build on it so that might not be a huge blocker..time will tell!
Well reinventing the wheel worked well for tanks 
Not enthusiastic so much as interested. It’s always been done one way and I’m very curious what way Monzo will come up with. Normally when someone says they are radically changing a product it just means giving it a makeover but the product is essentially the same.
All very complicated.
Indeed.
Looking just at shared pots - why so complex; how would they work?
Seems to me that the simplest method would be to have one account create and own a pot, and share it, with either a bespoke Monzo system for authorising deposits and withdrawals (with opt-in warnings so you can’t complain when someone you share the pot with takes all the money).
Why ‘create and own’? Because that’s the most straightforward way of answering ‘what happens to a shared pot if someone dies?’ If not the owner, nothing. If the owner, it’s frozen with the rest of their funds until the executor can access it.
Why this could be a huge blocker and not a substitute for a full joint account? Because with a full joint account, if one account holder dies, the other account holder still has full access to the account. That’s what is important to the majority of people who want joint accounts to be supported properly, not the day-to-day use.
My guess is Monzo will try and see if they can legally find a way to make shared pots work like joint accounts first, and only if they can’t make it work will they look at a more traditional joint account format. Which could easily take a year or more to figure out the legals before they even start building anything.
I don’t currently need a joint account so I’m happy using Monzo as-is at the moment. If I found myself in a situation where I did need one, I’d probably end up looking to Natwest or somewhere else on the high street; have salaries paid in there, transfer monthly spending across to Monzo after each payday. That way in the event of my sudden death, at most only a month’s worth of spending money will be tied up. It’s also pretty much the way I currently use Monzo anyway.
tl;dr, for Monzo to implement joint accounts will be complicated! And might not even work properly, legally speaking. 
But there’s an easy way around it by using a different bank for a joint account until such a time as Monzo have caught up.
Actually I would fundamentally disagree with you: whilst tanks work exceptionally well for some use cases, for the vast majority of use cases a bog standard car is far superior (and I certainly never had the desire to drive a tank rather than my car, for any practical purposes).
And I think that Monzo’s shared pots might be similar to this: far superior for some use cases (the often quoted flat mates, for example, who really shouldn’t have a joint account), but for those who actually want to fully merge their finances, a joint account will be a far better choice.
Obviously, I can’t know the future, and so may be completely wrong…
(Additionally a large number of tanks actually drive on wheels, and even those that drive on tracks, require some sort of wheels/cogs to drive them…)
I would love linked accounts. I could give one to my daughter for pocket money and one to my partner. Doesn’t necessarily have to be a card either. A virtual card would work for Smartphone payments.
The big banks are terrible on many respects and its a blessing we have challengers but it would be wrong to assume everything about the current system is broken. I endlessly hear people complaining about their current bank but never about the way they handle their joint accounts. They are simple and they work for most of the country in relationships.
Joint pots sounds great!
Not when your partner decides to withdraw everything and then freeze the account prior to splitting up with you!
It would. It could be better though 