Help us improve social payment features 🙏🏼

[AndyJMX (Andy Mellor)]

It just doesn’t work with budgets. If I split a bill of say, £100 and I get £50 back, I would expect this to be added back to my budget. Budgeting is basically broken and useless for me without this!

[Carlo1460]

Have you tagged the receiving payment the same as the spending category to balance it out?

£100 out for food
£50 in for food
£50 spent on food

Unless you mean the overall budget figure for the period you set, then I’m not sure how to fix that bit

[awjdean]

Here are my thoughts on potential improvements to social payment features. For each section (Bill splits and payment requests, Shared tabs, Other), I’ve listed the features/improvements in order of my personal preference.

Looking forwards to seeing the improvements in Monzo’s social payments features!

Bill splits and payment requests

• Being able to send reminders for payment requests like you can with bill splits.

• Tracking of monzo.me bill split payments and monzo.me payment requests, so they get marked as paid (this could also be useful for Monzo Business customers who use the feature to get paid for invoices via monzo.me).

• Including a note when you send a bill split, so you can explain what a bill split is for.

• Split received money.

• Being able to bill split the remaining amount after already sending a bill split for that transaction.

• Share receipts when sending a bill split.

• Editing bill splits.

Shared tabs

• Partially settle a shared tab.

• Being able to add a note/description of what the transaction is for when adding an item to a shared tab and being able to add a receipt/share a receipt added to your transaction.

• Calculate splits in local currency. The issue of transactions needing time to settle would need to be overcome.

• Different options when dividing up a shared tab item (percentages, shares - basically what Splitwise has).

Other

• I think it would be good to be able to share your account details from Payments → Request, since that seems like a natural place to find that option (this might be more of a general payments feature, but seems easy to implement?).

• Monzo-to-Monzo recurring payments. This would make Monzo easier to use with other Monzo users (network effects etc…).

[Oznom1 (Hannah)]

Would love to be able to bulk pay splits from one or multi people.

For example, me and partner split everything and sometimes they build up. So I’d like to click select all and repay him without needing to go into each split individually.

We split rather than have a shared tab because it doesn’t categories on his account correctly else and he likes to track what he spends.

[johnyorke]

Hey @awjdean .

Thanks for all this great feedback. We’re enjoying digesting it all as a squad so please keep it coming.

I just wanted to quickly address this point:

Tracking of monzo.me bill split payments and monzo.me payment requests, so they get marked as paid

If I am understanding you correctly, then I’m pleased to say this is something we quietly introduced earlier this year, whereby if a friend of yours uses the monzo.me link you sent them it should reconcile against the transaction when it eventually gets paid. On the transaction detail it should be marked just like any paid Monzo payment would.

We still have some work to do there (eg what to do instead of “Friend 1”!) but hopefully this will help you keep your finances just that little bit tidier

Thanks again!

[edwoollard (Edward Woollard)]

What steps are you taking to share the link with your brother? Once you’ve split the bill with someone not on Monzo, there should be a ‘Share request link’ button on the bill split widget which will give you a unique link to share with that person. This link is different to what we had before and also different from your general Monzo.me link - it’s completely unique to that transaction and that user’s share of that transaction.

We’ve just tested on both Android and iOS and all is working exactly as we’d expect.

If you’re still having trouble with this experience after trying the steps above then feel free to send me the request link and we can take a deeper look for you!

[edwoollard (Edward Woollard)]

Yeah if he’s using your Monzo.me vanity URL then it won’t reconcile. Your brother has to be using the exact link we provide on the bill split widget. This requires you to share it every time you bill split with someone not on Monzo as it’s completely unique and they can’t just use the same link they did last bill split.

Keen to see how your testing goes later!

[awjdean]

@johnyorke

If I am understanding you correctly, then I’m pleased to say this is something we quietly introduced earlier this year, whereby if a friend of yours uses the monzo.me link you sent them it should reconcile against the transaction when it eventually gets paid. On the transaction detail it should be marked just like any paid Monzo payment would.

That’s great news! Thanks for the update!

Out of interest, does the unique monzo.me link expire after it has been used to pay the bill split ?

Being able to edit the name (friend 1 etc…) would be a nice addition I think.

[johnyorke]

Yep, sorry I didn’t make it clear when I said “monzo.me link you sent them”, I meant the one generated from the bill-split

+1 to losing the “Friend 1”. As a squad we have the non-Monzo payment experience (both on the sending and receiving end) very much on our minds. The feature we’re discussing is just a tiny step towards smoothing that out.

[Peter_G]

@N26throwaway

Or a manual way to apply a payment to a bill split would be nice

This!

Monzo 1.0 seemed to want to automate everything. Some of it worked, quite a lot (like predicted outgoings in Summary) didn’t. Having the ability to manage things manually and tidy things up would be neat.

[Peter_G]

Oh yes, automate where you can. But properly and effectively, and with the ability to override if needed!

[awjdean]

@johnyorke

+1 to losing the “Friend 1”. As a squad we have the non-Monzo payment experience (both on the sending and receiving end) very much on our minds. The feature we’re discussing is just a tiny step towards smoothing that out.

I think it would also be useful if the non-Monzo bill splits showed up under Shared payments along with Monzo-to-Monzo bill splits (if they don’t already).

Basically, as much feature parity between Monzo-to-Monzo bill splits, non-Monzo bill splits, and Monzo-to-Monzo payment requests would be great, so that once the requests are sent they are all treated the same.

[Paulw (Paul)]

It would be good too if you include improved naming in Payments and the Feed plus profile pictures within this project as that needs some much needed love.

[awjdean]

Please also add the ability to split payments made using the Monzo Flex card directly !

[Achchu (Achchuthan)]

I am going on a trip soon with some friends and everyone has Monzo but my cousin doesn’t. His account was blocked and he has tried to contact Monzo to open an account but has had no response for more than a year now. I am wondering if I create a shared tab for the trip am I able to add someone who is not on Monzo to the tab, similar to how it appears on split payments?

[BristolMatt (Matt C)]

@Sarah-Bee Have you seen this?:

Shared Tabs: Adding custom bill 100% to one person does not update total

Issue: When adding a custom bill to a shared tab (of 2 people) and setting the whole payment to one person then totals owed at the top do not update. Details to reproduce: Have a shared tab with 2 people with a balance against each person at the top. (£-880 and +£880 in my example) (Screenshot 1) Add New payment > Add custom bill > enter amount (£88 in my example) (Screenshot 2) On the “Split Bill” page set all the money to one person (£88 to one and £0 to the other) Click add Bill (Screens…

[foxt]

Better share splits for people without Monzo. I get that Monzo’s interests lie in getting everyone on Monzo, but not everyone wants to move over just to satisfy someone else’s mild inconvenience when they just bank transfer instead of using Monzo.me. I understand the team recently added Apple Pay support, for which I’m grateful, you’ve made the person who doesn’t have Monzo’s experience better.

However, for the person that does have Monzo, it still kinda sucks.

• You start a bill split, and get given a list of phone contacts on Monzo, and an upsell to get others on Monzo. It’s not immediately obvious that you can tap ‘Next’, to just share links non-Monzo users.
• Then, you’re given the option to add “Friend 1”, “Friend 2”, etc. Okay, but who’s who? I don’t want to have to remember that James is Friend 1, Emily is Friend 2, etc etc. Give me a note textbox for each participant.
• Then, you tap confirm, aaand, it drops you back to the transaction page. The buttons to “Share Payment Links” appear, but it’s not a immediately obvious CTA. It seems like there should be another page in the flow that’s missing, and there’s no indication who you’ve already sent the link to.
• And when I recieve the payment, it still shows “Friend 1”(!!), of course I can tap into it and see the name, but it should just be there.

Pictures show a thousand words, so here’s my “novice designer tries and redesign apps in their lunch break” version https://www.figma.com/file/GfTlBe5r9c9IVMRsTTrRM8/Untitled?type=design&node-id=0%3A1&t=xUKGF8UC8Zc0Xz8p-1

[awjdean]

@foxt

Then, you’re given the option to add “Friend 1”, “Friend 2”, etc. Okay, but who’s who? I don’t want to have to remember that James is Friend 1, Emily is Friend 2, etc etc. Give me a note textbox for each participant.

This please - being able to input names would be really useful, especially now that payment of the link is tracked automatically !

[MattJack45 (Matthew Jackson)]

Hi Sarah,

Thanks for reaching out! I love the convenience of Split the Bill and Shared Tabs on Monzo. They’ve been super useful for managing expenses with friends.

One suggestion would be to improve accessibility within the app to these features, maybe with quick shortcuts. Also, adding more flexibility in splitting bills, like custom percentages, would be great.

Clarifying that these features are available to both Monzo and non-Monzo users could clear up misconceptions. And having more in-app tips or resources would help users make the most of these features.

Thanks for listening to feedback and working to improve!

Best,

Matthew

[BruceLee (Lee Fennell)]

Great shout @MattJack45.

I would like to see standard ratio applied to the shared tab.
I.e. all fees/items added are split 70/30 by default.
This allows me to set-up “fair” shares between people that have different salary.

@MattJack45

Also, adding more flexibility in splitting bills, like custom percentages, would be great