To my understanding, Monzo is the only bank that charges for access to Freeagent (via having to get a Business Pro/Plus account to use the service).
That means the technology exists, but the bank charges to let you access your data in this way.
Is it right that Monzo should charge for this when even every High Street bank provides it for free?
It doesn’t seem very “challenger bank” to charge me for open access to data.
As has been said hundreds of times, it’s not the same.
Monzo’s OpenBanking that you pay for has a lot more features. The free versions you get with other banks is meh in comparison.
I’ve always said that Monzos free business offering is poor compared to others. I don’t need invoicing or anything like that, but I do need to connect my account to my accounting package. No way I’m going to pay Monzo for that when Starling does it all for free. I’m sure that’s the case for a large number of people who would otherwise happily have a Monzo business account.
Monzo are also the only one to “Charge” for your credit score access.
Is this true? I’ve just looked at Barclays and HSBC and from what I can tell after a free introductory period Barclays charge £8.50/month and HSBC charge £5.50/month for a business account. However, I’ve never needed a business account myself so might be looking at prices incorrectly.
Good point - I meant that other banks don’t charge you an uplift to use Freeagent access (which getting Pro/Plus for the purposes of getting Freeagent is)
It’s not even access to Freeagent the software itself, just the permission to have it talk to Monzo’s data…
That’s because they’re already charging you for a business account. You’re comparing Monzo’s free account with other banks’ paid accounts, which is an unequal comparison. If you pay for a Monzo business account you get the access other banks provide plus more.
HSBC used to charge a monthly fee for the business account, and an additional fee per account for data feeds. I think I paid £5 per month account fee and IIRC they wanted £4.50 each for data feeds for the current account and the deposit account to link to Sage. That was before I moved to Monzo as a beta user on the business account though.
Would Mettle, Starling, Revolut, Tide etc be a better comparison?
Mettle and Starling maybe as they’re actual banks, but Revolut and Tide aren’t in the same category at all as they’re not banks. With the former, fine to compare, but I don’t know what you get with their free business accounts compared to Monzo. So, yes, compare them, but if the free offerings are missing something fundamental that Monzo provides then that’s part of the mix. Even if that’s not the case, it’s clear that Monzo is far from the only bank that charges for access to the data feed.