That is disgraceful and worrying. Matched betting is nothing more than gambling using the bookmaker’s offers to tip the odds on your favour. How did they actually determine that you were matching your bets? They certainlly cannot legally have access to your betting records.
As said above, profiting from gambling is not a business. Profits from business are taxable. This needs sorting out but no doubt like any other company once they get to a certain size they can and will do whatever they like, within the law.
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I’d assume they guessed because of the constant bill splitting or similar straight after a payment to/from gambling.
Do monzo even have a problem with sole traders using the account for business?
I don’t think they do, so even if this is business (which it clearly isn’t) why are they discriminating against betting,
For the record I sell (private) on eBay , and the money comes to my monzo account , should I be worried?!?
Please let us know what monzo respond with
This is slightly worrying. I hope someone from Monzo can come and clarify this. I make money every month from doing survey sites. Like Prolific, Qmee, Swagbucks that sort of thing. It goes into my Paypal account and I transfer into my Monzo. Are they going to say it’s business related activity?
I make a small amount of casual income from JustPark. HMRC allow me to treat this as tax free income
Would be interested to get clarification on where Monzo draws the line between business income (requiring a business account) and casual income (for which regular account is presumably ok?)
Any official word from Monzo? I know they can’t discuss specific accounts on here but some clarification on whether matched betting is allowed or not would be good.
Seems ridiculous to class it as business use!
Spoke to support again and they said that they couldn’t provide any further information other than what they’d already told me.
Hopefully I hear back from the complaints team soon and i’ll update here as soon as I do.
Don’t want them to say anything specific about my account, just need them to clarify if and why matched betting isn’t allowed, and if thats the case, what else they consider “business purposes”.
Like @o99 and @adztaylor have said there are plenty of things that regular people do that generate a small level of income but are by no means a business!
Does this mean that if I want to sell some of my old stuff on ebay I need a business account??
Or that if I want to stream on twitch I need a business account? This is ridiculous
Even in the case of actual small businesses,
Sole traders and partnerships are NOT legally required to own a business account and can use a personal account for this.
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If they will not tell you how they determined you are matched betting perhaps a Subject Access Request would reveal.
The whole concept is ridiculous. If I back a horse which subsequently shortens in price and I then lay the horse to lock in a profit do I get my account closed and furthermore, how could they legally know?
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I’d suggest going down the complaints route would be the way forward here…
Especially given the info I received…
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Maybe in this case, (not that I know what the set up is) is the continued payments to certain people/accounts? Coupled with as soon as some money drops into your account maybe?
Might be worth making a complaint or pushing COps a bit more for a “specialist” seeing as @Nickh got the reply he did.
Yeah thats VERY different to what my sister and I were told.
Hopefully I hear back from complaints fairly soon cause this is a mess at the moment.
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It’s possible it’s a misunderstanding from someone at Monzo as to what matched betting is - Nationwide weren’t keen when I was going through my mortgage application 
How old was your Monzo account when it was frozen?
You can add to your complaint, so make sure you include a link to the above to further support it 
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Just received a response from monzo, confirming that they are treating my email as a formal complaint and will be conducting an investigation.
They said to allow upto fifteen days for them to issue their final response to the complaint, though hopefully it will be sooner than that.
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Glad to see they’ve taken it on.
I think they have to give a timescale just to manage expectations and not get in trouble with FOS and the FCA.
Hopefully it gets sorted out - hopefully just an innocent misunderstanding!
Within that they should have asked if there is anything further you’d like to add. Make sure you include the screenshot/link to the guy who got a different response to you.
It took around 10 days for me to get my response. You will get it via the app as a PDF on official letter headed paper. They’re very fair and considerate
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I think it might be too 
Seen it a few times on here where COps have said different things to different people. There was a response from Monzo on it too with an explanation and how they plan to fix it.
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Yeah I think it could be the way there is a regular(ish) payment to friends and family and less about the income from the betting sites?
But that is just a guess - I can’t see why Monzo would get in a tizz about it as it all looks above board.
Matched betting has nothing to do with friends and family - I think the whole “sister” argument was just to add more context to it being banned across multiple people.
All matched betting will be is transactions to and from betting websites - No one else will be involved.
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No yeah I get that which is why I don’t think the payments from the betting sites is what has caused Monzo to go funny.
The whole “business account” argument from Monzo would to me, suggest that if there are regular payments to the same people and same accounts whenever money is paid into the account (admittedly from the betting sites) Monzo might see it as an employer paying his/her employees.
Granted I don’t think the OP has said anywhere that that is what was happening but I just read on from “was doing it with my family and friends”.
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95% of the time matched betting is done completely independently. Though on occasion we do work together on specific events to make more than we otherwise could individually.
And we have transferred money to and from eachother. But I see no reason why this would have an effect. Friends and family will transfer money between eachother anyway, and whats being done outside of monzo is not their business so long as its legal.
I think @JustJordds might be right about them seeing it as a paying employees thing, but it is absolutely not the case, we each do matched betting independently, none of us are employed by eachother and it still isn’t a business.
Hopefully the complaint will lead to them looking into this properly and getting it resolved
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