If you haven't moved over, what's stopping you from making Monzo your main bank?

My salary is, for reasons I won’t get into, something I can’t move away from my legacy bank. Even then, I’m not too hot on the idea of having an account with only one bank — I’d rather my day-to-day spending is split from my important bills, for example, so I’m not having to sift through my direct debits to see how much I spent on coffee.

Also, joint accounts. But they’re working on that, so ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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Is the salary issue limited to a next-generation bank like Monzo or would you not want to switch it even to another legacy bank?

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Oops, I should have been more specific — I can’t move it away from my specific legacy bank. Even if I wanted to move it to another legacy bank, I couldn’t.

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That sounds like an interesting situation. I’d love to know more hah

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Tell us more…

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The gist of it is this: I am contractually obliged to have my salary paid into a specific account, for reasons I won’t go into.

So yeah, even if I wanted Monzo to be my Big Bills Account I couldn’t make it the one account where everything goes.

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I find it so strange for there to be a contract for your salary to be paid into a certain account :bowing_man:

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It’s really strange! But hey, I don’t make the rules.

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Years ago staff who worked for legcay banks were contractually obliged to have salary paid into a branch of their employers bank. I seem to recall that this practice was later banned under EU legislation, but I can imagine that this remains in place for particular non standard roles / contracts…

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As @caribo has said it seems to be a requirement for some banks and their subsidiary companies, it’s been mentioned here before. Doesn’t really make sense as you can just transfer it out to your preferred bank after payday but I suppose it’s easier for their payroll department and probably cheaper

Oh, I didn’t realise it had been mentioned before. S’pose I should just say it — yeah, my employer is a legacy bank, so I have to have my salary paid into an account provided by them.

I could transfer the whole thing out, but I honestly like having a bills account and a day-to-day spending account.

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Yeah, sounds plausible

You can confirm that their plan works - making you have your salary paid in there keeps the money in their hands for longer :wink:

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I mean, most of my Direct Debits and SOs are scheduled for the day after payday, so it doesn’t make that much of a difference tbf :joy:

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Ah, well then!

This makes a little more sense I suppose

Still weird

Oh, absolutely. But then legacy banks are very good at making things weird and complicated, not that we all didn’t know that anyway…

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I know one guy at a legacy bank who was not permitted to hold shares in other banks nor sell them for their personal benefit so they ended up giving them away to me free :slight_smile: oh the bizzare nature of the legacy banks!

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If you ever want to switch away I think that part of the contract could be deemed as null and void due to the EU regulation.

You can’t dictate into which bank account you pay your employees.

But the system works for you so it’s not all bad :+1:

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I mean, I wasn’t aware that there was a regulation banning this until I spoke to an employee of a different legacy bank who’d had the requirement removed for them. I’ve never really felt the need to challenge it — like you said, it works for me — but it’s very odd.

Does anyone know which specific EU regulation prevents this, btw? I might bring it up with HR or my union…

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