I think you should wait for the official word from Monzo - there are many well informed contributors to these chats, but ultimately a Monzo tag on the poster is what matters.
Tom the boss of Monzo has previously discussed Joint Accounts in meetings and a Periscope broadcast. That is why we can say they have no plans to introduce them at this point.
Monzo have also discussed alternatives to Joint Accounts such as virtual pots linking two separate individuals’ accounts.
I’m sure Monzo are aware how popular existing Joint Accounts are. But, Monzo are all for changing the way everyone currently babks. I’m 90% sure they have a solution for Joint Accounts, but it won’t be the same as what you currently use. As Richard has mentioned, virtual savings pots and the like will most likely be what the solution is, but it hasn’t been confirmed yet.
Hold tight!
3 Likes
+1! I will solely use Monzo as soon as you support joint accounts but can’t use it apart from on holiday until then 
️Can we get a rough timescale please?
2 Likes
This is really important to me! I work, my wife doesn’t. All our money goes into a joint account which means either of us can spend as if it belonged to us. This is important if I die. Joint accounts are not frozen, so Mrs B has access to our money. If it’s in my name with some weird virtual savings pot arrangement it’s my money and is frozen pending probate which leaves my wife and kids in trouble. It’s been fun to play during the beta, but I simply can’t move over fully when the current accounts come without a joint account, it would be irresponsible…
13 Likes
Joint accounts are one of our most requested features (after current accounts of course ;)) and we want to make sure that we can offer them in a Monzo way.
It seems like there are a few different cases where joint accounts make sense:
- Partnership of equals, so essentially couples each having full access to the account
- Joint stuff, but not fully joined, this would be cool for shared houses. You could probably have loads of people in something like this
- One account holder, extra visibility for example for an elderly relative, or a customer with high needs
What else would you want to see? And how could we make these better than what’s in the market right now?
I should stress, these are just my thoughts, not a formal indication of our roadmap!
11 Likes
That’s a very good point. Virtual pots for bill splitting is fine for my use case, but obviously the legal distinction between the account types is important to you.
One the most useful features of Monzo and similar new app accounts is the ability to see transactions immediately, and therefore always being sure about how much you have left to spend. As opposed to the whole ‘pending transactions’ ‘available balance vs real balance’ of traditional bank accounts.
The main use for Monzo accounts for us is to help us ensure we stay within our monthly spending budgets. However, a lot of our spending is joint; going out for dinner, weekly food shop, fuel for joint car, etc. Currently we are actually using a different app based card (a competitor to Monzo that I shan’t mention) for this because it allowed me to order an extra card for her to use. She can have the app installed and, although my name is on the card, it works pretty much like a joint account with their being 2 cards. You can also create a number of virtual cards that can be used for online shopping but you don’t get a physical card. This seems to work well, but it is clunky having a different app / card provider for different uses. It may be that you can do this now with Monzo also, but haven’t checked.
As the higher earner I agree to pay more towards joint stuff, but I need to keep track of it otherwise I get into trouble myself (i.e. spend too much) this leads to arguments and ill feeling) I want to have a simple way of contributing an agreed upon amount each month so that I still feel like I’ve got stuff to spend on myself, (mountain biking is an expensive hobby and she has no interest in it, but she likes buying clothes).
I’d like to be able to see, at a glance, how much is left on our joint account, and how much I have left of my own ‘pocket money’, likewise for her. Another great feature would be a joint savings with goals, so we can both make personal sacrifices in order to save for holidays / christmas, new car or whatever.
I like the idea at the beginning of this thread about being able to set a proportional contribution of each party to joint spending. The ‘virtual account / card’ that would take proportionally from each account.
Another idea is having everything go into one pot, but each getting an equal ‘allowance’ or pocket money budget to spend on yourself using your individual card. Perhaps over time the app could calculate how much this allowance should be automatically.
Managing joint finances is an area that really needs a lot of improvement across all banks. We are about to buy our first house together and are about to open a joint account. I was in a previous relationship where had bought a house at quite a youngish age (23 am now 32) and we had everything in a joint account, no individual accounts. But we were struggling and managing it was difficult, she always felt like she didn’t have anything to spend on herself and so would sometimes sneakily buy stuff without telling me and then the account would go overdrawn, making management impossible. It’s now 10 years later and I’m really keen to find a better solution for joint finances but there’s still nothing out there.
4 Likes
I like these.
Would be interesting (In the future) to set up multiple joint pots.
An example would be my friend and I saving for a road trip or holiday, and both want to commit X amount per month, this pot would have a fairly fixed lifespan, and then would no longer be needed. In our specific case, it wouldn’t matter if 1 person was the ‘lead’ it is more a division (virtual) of funds held in the account. So they’re there, but not accessed unless you chose to.
I guess, short term savings account/goal account.
Cheers
1 Like
Joint Accounts are a deal breaker for us too. Whilst I organise all of our finances through my bank online, I have multiple accounts & the most important one of these is our joint account (with both my wife’s & my names on it, along with our own individual cards). Our family lives out of this account, & it keeps the roof over our heads. I can’t ditch my old bank & fully migrate over until Monzo has something comparable &/or better.
8 Likes
Yes that’s the same for me and my family. It all goes into one place and we pay ourselves a monthly allowance into separate single accounts. This is for us to spend how we want and it to allow a but of privacy. Generally we use it for presents and personal hobbies but despite sharing everything it’s important for that sense of individual freedom at times. It’s an emotional thing rather than logical.
3 Likes
This sounds exactly the same as my situation. I pay a higher % towards the joint account(Based on my wage vs hers) while allowing us to have our own pool of cash for hobbies, savings, gifts. We then spend the remaining money on the joint account for joint activities such as dinner, cinema and holidays.
A normal joint account works well for this, but Monzo could add smart user-friendly features such as:
- Auto-top up (from our accounts to the joint one)
- The same spending interface as a normal account but with added % of money contributed to each item/top-up
- An indicator who’s card was used to access the account
- Closing the account should allow for a 50-50 divide or return of funds
- A single joint account could have pools within it for savings i.e. holiday, new car
- If single accounts have available “pools”, then the joint accounts and their pools should appear within that list.
1 Like
Joint accounts I think are going to be a deal breaker for us. Me and my husband have always had a joint account as we use to be flatmates but salaries go into one account and we both use it as we see fit.
We do both have personal accounts however our monzo cards have taken over this role but when we do get the full accounts it really will be a deal breaker to not have a joint account as my other half does contracting so it’s irregular and he can go weeks without having any of his own personal money.
2 Likes
[bump] and +1
In addition to the many valid and apposite reasons above my wife is technologically ‘challenged’* so a separate account would be difficult to manage.
*She still has trouble with iOS keyboard after 3yr ownership…
Definite +1 
for me and my wife.
All of our money goes in and out of one account regardless of who earns more (what’s yours is mine etc.). We would not switch to Monzo as our current account until this was an option. Ultimately it is just a single account with 2 cards.
The only exception to this is our pocket money. Along with our joint account, we each have a personal account for personal spending (clothes, toiletries, presents for one another that we don’t want the other seeing!).
Which brings me on to my second point, I would love to have a joint 
account AND a personal spending card, and as much as I love the hot coral I would get them confused too much. Is there the option of choosing the colour of your card. Keep the bright colours, but a luminous green would be my choice!
No there is no choice of colour and a luminous green would be too similar to Fidor bank https://banking.fidorbank.uk/assets/mastercard/cards/half-blank/debit-card-big-d15634ea24ebd856e63deeeae9d37bc94f672e7b154ee43490497ec196665521.png
If and when Monzo introduce multiple accounts the easiest thing is to do like RBS and print an extra line of information below the name to show what account it is
Personally I would far prefer having the different colours for different accounts as opposed to just an extra line. The ability to differentiate quickly would be a massive
In a similar vein to the hot coral a fluorescent green (https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/21z7D-hN2KL.SL500_AC_SS350.jpg) would be more what I was thinking. Not likely to get that confused with Fidor.
There’s four colours in the logo - choose one of them?
1 Like
How about keeping the existing overall colour, but introduce the option of a differently coloured corner or logo to make cards easier to distinguish?
Hi,
Could we have the ability to set up linked accounts with spouses?
The reason is that sometimes my wife will sometimes forget her card and I will pay for something for her, or I will pay for the both of us and it skews my reports because the amount doubles. Yes I could “split the bill” but it feels like we are moving money around needlessly.
Perhaps having the ability to send part or all of my payment to her account reports without actually charging her account could be something of interest?
Thanks.
1 Like