A suggestion for the new Flex changes: could Monzo introduce a “Holiday Flex” feature?
One of the best uses of Flex was abroad. You could use it for everything, a €3 coffee, a €60 lunch, taxis, attractions, dinner, etc. with 0% FX fees, then spread the whole holiday spend over 3 months interest-free.
With the new £100 minimum for 3-month interest-free Flex, that use case has largely disappeared because, by volume, most individual holiday transactions are under £100.
A possible compromise would be to keep the £100 minimum for normal GBP spending, but allow customers to group eligible foreign-currency transactions from a trip into one “Holiday Flex” balance and spread the total over 3 months at 0%. At the end of a holiday Monzo already shows your spending for that trip.
For example, if someone spent £1,500 across 30 transactions while abroad, they could select the trip afterwards and Flex the £1,500 total over 3 months.
That would preserve one of Flex’s genuinely distinctive travel benefits without bringing back interest-free Flex on every small UK purchase.
I mean… yes, banks offering credit products generally involves lending money to people who don’t want to pay for everything in cash immediately. That is, quite literally, the entire concept of Flex.
By that logic, should Monzo scrap Flex altogether because anyone using Pay in 3 is apparently buying something they “can’t afford”?
Fair point. Maybe the better version isn’t “foreign currency Flex” at all, but “Trip Flex”.
Monzo already groups spending into trips. Let people Flex the total spend from a recognised trip afterwards, whether that’s Spain, Scotland or somewhere else, provided the combined spend meets a minimum threshold. I understand this may prove practically difficult.
The point isn’t really that foreign spending deserves special treatment, it’s preserving the ability to spread lots of small transactions from one defined period of spending into a single Flex plan.
If Monzo simply didn’t want customers using Flex at 0%, they wouldn’t still offer 3 months at 0% on purchases over £100.
The change looks more like they don’t want to subsidise lots of tiny individual Flex plans. My suggestion is just a way of grouping those smaller transactions into one larger balance that still meets the spirit of the new £100 threshold.
Thanks for explaining credit. I don’t think anyone envisioned lending to extend to “oh let’s go to Ibiza for a weekend” or “let’s give him £2.50 for milk and let him pay it back in 83p increments”.
This type of lending isn’t responsible - it encourages people to borrow for random things they can’t afford.
You seem to be arguing that borrowing for discretionary spending is inherently irresponsible. Banks and credit card companies very clearly do not operate on that principle.
Credit cards are routinely used for everyday purchases (including your £2.50 milk example) and major banks explicitly lend for discretionary spending such as holidays (a weekend to Ibiza). Responsible lending is about whether someone can sustainably repay, not whether you personally approve of the purchase.
A 0% Holiday Flex would simply let someone spread an already incurred trip balance over three fixed payments. For Monzo, the logic is obvious, it keeps more travel spend on Monzo and within Flex. Whether the economics work is for Monzo to decide, hence posting it on a feedback/ideas forum.
As a customer, Flex was materially more useful to me abroad than most competing offers. Without it, I’m simply more likely to use something like PayPal Debit instead: FX-free and 1–1.5% cashback.