Help us improve social payment features 🙏🏼

[j06 (Jamie)]

It was part of the sign–up flow for Original Plus. Now I think it just says “coming soon” again.

[Sarah-Bee (Sarah B)]

These ideas are great, giving us a lot of food for thought, not only on small fixes but bigger ideas too!

Thank you all for your suggestions, it’s great to have your engagement.

I’m passing on your suggestions to the team, as we speak (type?).

[duncang (Duncan)]

@N26throwaway

They’re nice ideas but for me turned out to be not much more than a gimmick.

Snap. I know that internally Monzo would probably have prioritised this because of the network effects / customer number growth, but I’d rather have joint account parity, especially custom categories and virtual cards, as those would actually be useful to me.

[Peter_G]

Strap in, for I have thoughts!

• As others have said, shared tabs really need to benefit from partial payment.
• Also on shared tabs, it would be useful to have a bit more info about what the bill split will be, and why, before it happens. The first time I used it, it just happened and we were all confused about how it worked and how it was all calculated. A quick “are you sure” / summary screen showing the calculations and how they work, before settling up would be fab. I talked a bit about that here.
• Similarly, it would be good to be able to send that summary by email (or Whatsapp or whatever) so everyone knows why they owe what they owe.
• The UI on the Payments/Shared tabs looks very underbaked and a very minimal MVP. There’s nothing to explain what it is or how it works. It painfully bare bones.
• Payments for shared tabs / splits need to work better with categories. For example, if I pay £10 on Eating Out, and split the bill equally, I want the original payment to be amended to be £5 on the Eating Out Category, then £5 on a new special Split Bill category, which is excluded like the Transfers one. This is gonna be more complicated for Tabs: if I pay £10 under Eating Out, mate £10 under Personal Care and partner £10 under Transport, I want to find a way to have £3.33 of each of those reflected against the respective categories. A conundrum for you
• Developing that, I’d also quite like the notes field of the payments we receive/send to settle tabs to reference the tab and its contents.
• Again, similarly to Flex, splits and shared tabs really need to be incorporated into the transaction screen. When you tap into it, you should be able to see whether the transaction is part of a tab, whether it’s been split, whether folk have ponied up the money, and any messages / emoji responses etc. All from that screen, please.
• Like others have said, we need splits and tabs to come to connected accounts!
• I want to use shared tabs to consolidate spending for me, myself and I. That means I want to be able to create a tab that doesn’t have anyone else in, but I can use to record spend against a project (e.g. a kitchen replacement or a holiday). I also want to add manual transactions to that, so I can keep a proper log of everything I’ve spent… (I talked a bit about that here)
• While the UI is so so basic right now, I think there’s capacity to do something that sparks joy and is all in one place. I want to go somewhere to see all past and present splits and tabs, to monitor repayment and to tap buttons to chase them. And, for that matter, why are they separate? Are splits just immediately settled tabs? Can we bring them closer together / convert a split to a tab?
• When we create a split / add transactions to a tab, I think we’re implicitly giving permission for others to see those. Can we find somewhere to be able to see the details of each transaction in a tab, including notes etc, even if we didn’t make the purchase?
• Riffing a bit off that, I’m not overkeen on the card carousel metaphor, but what would have to be true to have a shared tab as a ‘card’ listing all the transactions from everyone as part of it?
• And, developing that, what if you could pay credit to a tab, so rather than being in debit, it holds credit which is then used? More a kitty than a tab… You could be clear that the creator of the tab is the legal owner, but then let every member hook a virtual card off it (if they’re a Plus member) if the owner has set that as an option…
• We have a tea and milk club at work. Can we create new functionality to let folk ‘subscribe’ to a kitty, setting up regular payments and giving every member visibility of what’s been purchased? You could even do clever things like work out what the moving average spend per week/month is based on number of members and cost of goods purchased and change the subscription value. Same logic might also work for football teams etc
• If you have a split waiting to be paid, and receive that amount from a payee with a similar name, could you offer an option to automatically reconcile it and net off the split?
• Please, for the love of Monzo plushies, let me open Monzo.Me links in the app and not have to pay by card on the web!
• When splitting bills, especially on connected accounts, it would be good to specify a time that it should be paid by. I sometimes pay for things like AirBnBs on credit cards - as long as I get paid back before my next bill all is good.
• Similarly, I’d like to be able to create manual splits/tabs. e.g. I pay for flights, my mate for accommodation. He’s not into the whole automatic splits/tabs thing, but I want to work out how much I owe net, and when to pay it by within Monzo.
• Can we please please please have automatic actions for DDs / standing orders? I want to be able to add #Tags and Notes automatically, but also choose to add them to shared tabs and splits automatically without any intervention from me.
• The ability to be able to add line items to transactions, and split on that basis, would be cool. We have receipting functionality but we can’t create it Let me tell you about my anal friend who won’t split evenly and wants to pay exactly for who ate what. Being able to add line items to a transaction and then split by them would help here. (I know I need different friends They are the most excellent friends).

@N26throwaway

This might be controversial, but be Apple. Stop catering to work with people who bank elsewhere and focus on making this an amazing utility for people (and their friends) who actually use Monzo.

NO NO NO!

Do not do this!

Yes, focus on making the various Monzo features work well with each other. But be magnanimous. Create some open APIs to promote bill splitting across the industry between banks. Make them an open standard. Challenge other banks to match your high standards. Seek to improve banking for everyone, but do it so well that the Monzo experience will always be better.

A rising tide lifts all ships. Don’t be Apple. Be better.

---

Deep breath. I think that’s all. But be prepared for an epilogue with everything I’ve forgotten.

[davidwalton (Award Winning Hot Coral Analyst)]

@Peter_G

Let me tell you about my anal friend who won’t split evenly and wants to pay exactly for who ate what.

We may have the same friend

@Peter_G

Seek to improve banking for everyone, but do it so well that the Monzo experience will always be better.

@Peter_G

Don’t be Apple. Be better.

[N26throwaway (Sir Tom MacMonier)]

@davidwalton

We may have the same friend

I’m that friend.

[Revels]

The worst kind of people!

Sorry not sorry.

[Peter_G]

@N26throwaway

I’m that friend.

Have updated in light of new information:

@Peter_G

• The ability to be able to add line items to transactions, and split on that basis, would be cool. We have receipting functionality but we can’t create it Let me tell you about my anal friend who won’t split evenly and wants to pay exactly for who ate what. Being able to add line items to a transaction and then split by them would help here. (I know I need different friends They are the most excellent friends).

[N26throwaway (Sir Tom MacMonier)]

To be fair, I had a £2.50 burger out of an £80 bill split between 3 people. I ain’t paying 1/3rd!

[Peter_G]

If they didn’t split it £40 each and made you pay 2.50 you’re the one who needs a friend upgrade…

[Revels]

Agree there! I’d have just split it without you if I’m honest, for the sake of a couple of quid

[davidwalton (Award Winning Hot Coral Analyst)]

I always found it hilarious that when ‘do we agree to split the bill equally’ was agreed, certain people jumped to order filet mignon & creme brulee. Erm…

We found a balance to this - reasonable responsibility.
A £150 bill between 3 couples usually means £50 per couple, plus an equal tip. Good times, good entertainment, smileys all round.
But a £150 bill between 6 ‘individuals’ becomes ‘I’ll pay for what I ordered, plus tip’. Fair.

EDIT: Thread successfully derailed at this point. Now back to the social feature improvements!

[o99]

I’ve never used split the bill or shared tabs.

Something that’s put me off split the bill is I don’t understand how it works with non-monzo users. Do they need to join monzo? If not, how does it work? Do they have to dismiss a “you should join monzo advert” before they have the opportunity to pay as a non-monzo user? If yes, I wouldn’t be inclined to use it. I’d want option to pay without joining to be given equal side-by-side prominence to option to join monzo and pay). Some sort of demo video showing the experience (either within the app or linked to help article) would help me decide if it’s something I wanted to use.

I haven’t used Shared tabs because it’s limited to Monzo users (if I understand correctly) and I’ve long been happy with Splitwise for this type of functionality.

Something I think I would be more inclined to use is some kind of shared pot / kitty functionality where individuals can deposit money into a kitty and there can then be collective spending from the kitty. How would the collective spending work? I think it might get messy if everyone involved in the kitty can spend from it at the same time. It might be better to have one nominated spender at a time. The nominated spender would be able to assign transactions made in their debit card to the kitty. The nominated spender would also be able to pass the role on to someone else who then gains spending control and ability to pass on. This sort of replicates how a physical cash kitty is often used. The benefit of digital version is transparency. Everyone involved in the kitty should be able to see all the spending that has been done from the kitty. For non-Monzo users perhaps a kitty url showing transaction history could be provided. However, they’d have to join Monzo if they want to assume role of a spender or receive kitty spending notifications.

[JIMMWX (Village Idiot)]

@N26throwaway

This might be controversial, but be Apple. Stop catering to work with people who bank elsewhere and focus on making this an amazing utility for people (and their friends) who actually use Monzo.

In this context I don’t agree - my wife’s almost never going to use Monzo so if it was simpler each month for me to send her money (we split the bills but out of her account for ease) this would be epic.

[Will_i (William)]

The new bill split for non monzo people doesn’t seem to work. My brother staunchly refuses to get monzo (basically my only regular holdout (also an android user…) and he would always boat via the bill split links. But since the update it doesn’t work m, so I send him a link and he just does a manual bank transfer.

On monzo.me/ payment from non monzo bill splits, linking into the open banking api and then being able to do more than £100 because no card fees would be amazing!

[JIMMWX (Village Idiot)]

@Will_i

The new bill split for non monzo people doesn’t seem to work.

Yes, for me this is the most broken thing that I would love Monzo to fix

[JIMMWX (Village Idiot)]

BTW @Sarah-Bee I added payment into the thread title cos it’s all about payment social, and I keep thinking it also talks about non payment social features

[N26throwaway (Sir Tom MacMonier)]

@Will_i

also an android user

It’s always the androids!

I’m sure they do it just to be deliberately annoying! Life would be much simpler with them on iMessage and Monzo.

[RyanNixon]

Monzo could potentially create a unique URL that would allow non-Monzo customers to pay and have apple/android pay available within that URL for a quick transaction. Nothing worse than having to find your card to input your details every time!

[j06 (Jamie)]

Imagine Monzo might utilise Open Banking instead of card payment for this, at some point.