Idea to solve declined payments... Add "planned" payment?

Hey,

As part of going “full mondo”, I have my mondo card linked to my Amazon account. Amazon are a bit funny in that they take the payment when they ship the product, rather than when you buy it - So it basically happens at an unknown time, meaning if I don’t have enough money it gets declined.

With a regular bank, I would usually go into overdraft at this point. I can see here that this has been talked about a bit before, and I guess it’s not something Mondo want to consider (at least for now).

So here’s a different solution: When a user buys something from somewhere like Amazon, they can input that “planned” payment into Mondo, and then when the real payment comes through, “reconcile” it. That planned payment would count against your balance, making that amount essentially “locked”, guaranteeing it will get paid.

I can imagine this being really useful as well later for bills, rent, etc.

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Mondo does plan to offer overdrafts once they’re a real bank.

They’re also looking at adding notifications recommending that you top up when you’re low on cash.

Best option really though is to keep an eye on your own cashflow…

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Hm, I don’t know that keeping an eye on cashflow, or notifications when low on cash really solve the problem here. (And overdrafts are good, but I’d rather not owe my bank money if possible.)

I actually experienced it again today with something I backed on Kickstarter. Those payments go through when the project is successfully backed, which means £70 tried to leave my card 4 weeks after I actually agreed to the transaction. If I was to make sure that money was in my account, I definitely would have had to have that amount and date written down somewhere.

I suppose this question is kind of drawing the line between whether Mondo is a bank or an accounting app. I kind of got the idea from Xero, which I use for my business bank account. They have a feature where you can add a “bill”, and then your balance takes into account that liability onto your account. Maybe I am talking about a separate app here, but it definitely feels like it makes sense with Mondo’s mission of helping people manage their money.

Would love to hear @tom’s thoughts on this!

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Yes, we’d love to support some concept of “committed spend”. It should include your recurring bills, plus any one-offs that you’ve committed to, and show you your remaining “safe” balance.

We could even call it “safe to spend”, if Simple.com weren’t so trigger-happy with their trademark lawsuits http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/01/unsafe-to-say/

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Wow, that’s crazy. I can’t believe that got through trademarking. I’m sure there’s some other thing you could call it in any case!

Really great to hear you’re down with this idea too. Was starting to get worried that it would have to be a separate app, but that would never be able to “lock” the committed spend which is the killer feature here I think.

Personally, this is number one on my wishlist for Mondo (much higher than peer-to-peer spending)!

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