Drunk Mode - Temporary Card Freeze

I agree with @hugo. In a pub / bar you order a drink, they pour it, then they ask for payment. If your card is frozen you can’t pay. Were I a landlord, and that happened to me a few times, I’d simply refuse to take Monzo cards at all.

Maybe if there’s a warning threshold, and the notifications get LOUDER before the card freezes - e.g. LAST ROUND: YOU’VE SPENT £50 TONIGHT. Also I hope would the card unfreeze automatically in the morning, if I got a lift with mates.

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As @hugo has pointed out above and @alexs reiterated the point on a previous thread,

… there’d be no notification and no automatic card unfreeze / category limit disabled.

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I still think a complete lock out of the card preventing all transactions is incredibly dangerous as the point made by @mj84

and expanded upon later by myself

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So what would you like to see if there was a drunk/night out mode? I haven’t used Monzo on a night out (take money from an ATM is my freeze, then find I don’t have enough money on the card the next day*). Maybe a prompt to freeze your spending at a location - you’ve spent £x at 'spoons, would you like to freeze further spending here until 6am?

*enough money in total, but notes and coins that I’d rather was on the card…

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That ties in nicely with this idea -

obviously neither solution is perfect because if you’re on a pub crawl, for example, you’re not going to spend that much in a single location but the notifications are just an extra reminder, I think some sort of prompt would be useful.

Much better :slight_smile:, but still not perfect unfortunately

… or reached the limit on that category/merchant and then…

I’m now starting to realise that this pursuit for imposing a hard limit to our spending (by any means) is not quite so feasible as I thought.

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There clearly seems to be a need around here however I wonder whether we are jumping to the solution too quickly?

Is it really necessary to freeze the card / actually prevent payment? Perhaps there are some nudge type things that can be done if you go over your set limit without freezing e.g. snarky notifications (:scream: youve spent how much??) or maybe nominate a buddy for some social embarrassment (if my wife got notified of my spending on a night out over a certain amount maybe I would reign in my spending)!

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Simon (from Monzo) has mentioned setting up an integration that would send a tweet, every time you bought a beer during dry January (IFTTT would do this) :thumbsup:

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Exactly, given my new found aversion to the hard limit, a buddy and/or snarky notifications sounds better.

Another possible one:

You’re in danger of being embarrassed on YouTube! :grimacing:

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Haha I like that, maybe Monzo could go into ‘judge mode’ when you exceed your limit

“you are still spending? you arent very good at these limits”

:see_no_evil: I cant watch anymore”

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I wonder if there’s a bar tab app (with a decent selection of pubs, clubs and restaurants) that Monzo could integrate with? - After a quick search, none that I can find in the UK, unless my Google Fu is acting up.

When the limit is reached, it starts adding to the tab and notifies both user and bartender.

That would probably be a little bit too effective for my liking! I’d rather not have someone else policing my drinking…or kicking me out because they think I’ve drunk too much & there could be confusion due to rounds being bought.

Totaling up the evening’s spend, from multiple merchants would be important though, in order for this feature to be effective.

They would only need to know that your tab as been updated, not why because you’ve maxed out your Monzo card. Although as Monzo becomes more popular, they may catch on :thinking: Also it wouldn’t always be drink that maxes out the limit, as you may have ordered food before or with your drink too.

Yes, very common to do a pub crawl or visiting a pub and/or restaurant before heading to a club.

Although this could easily be done via the search feature in Monzo (soon to be on Android), but maybe not so easy after several pints.

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Ah I see, I thought you meant the bartender could be notified that you’d reached your spending limit! Yes, automated tab settlement (& closure) would be good :thumbsup: & I’m sure it would save bartenders some hassle.

There obviously does need to be a decent app for this though, as you said :arrow_down:

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Haha! I can see how that would open us up to some pretty judgy looks and not really necessary for them to know.

Cool, now we’ve just gotta find the right app and approach the developers, or design and develop it ourselves. Certainly wouldn’t mind helping out with that :smiley: :open_hands:

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How about after a certain time, each time you buy a drink you automatically donate the same amount to a random charity.

If I got a notification to say I had donated £10 to the Republican party, I would soon sober up.

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Turns out there’s actually a lot of options to help us spend less

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This is a slightly different way to solve this use case but we now have a way to get the same result :slight_smile:

The app doesn’t let you spend money from your Pots (out now for users of the test app so coming very :soon:) so if you’re going out, just transfer all the money you don’t want to spend into a Pot & then your remaining balance will be all you can spend :boom:

The only thing is, there doesn’t seem to be a workaround for this problem

so if your battery dies, you’ll have to find another way to contact the support team in order to spend the money that’s in your Pots..

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Has someone been watching “The Interns” :wink: