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

To avoid the monthly account fee I think you also have to either have:
a. £1000 paid in each month, or
b. a monthly balance that does not go under £1000

which could be a reason to keep it as a main account.

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Or… have a First Direct Savings Account too. I’ve never paid a fee since I joined them in 2013 as you don’t have to if you also have their savings account.

If @krr13 doesn’t have a First Direct Savings Account, I would recommend that they opens one and plonk £1 into it (although it doesn’t say you need to actually have money in the Savings Account to avoid the fee). A Savings Account can also be opened in just a minute or two.

https://www1.firstdirect.com/1/2/rates-and-charges/charges
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The only thing stopped me from moving over is that my current Bank First Direct give me a £250 interest free overdraft.

I still chat to a lot of people about monzo, and open the app up to show them. I would not feel comfortable with everyone seeing my salary payments.

Emma has solved this with ‘scramble mode’:
Screenshot_20180721_083436Screenshot_20180721_083419

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Cool idea! I’m often showing people the Monzo app so I can 100% see how this would be useful to you.

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I’m reluctant to have my salary paid in for exactly the same reason.

However I don’t particularly like Emma’s scramble mode. It keeps the same transaction names/dates and just assigns random values and a made-up currency symbol to them. It’s also too easy to leave scramble mode.

I think a demo mode would be better and you should need to authenticate (PIN or biometrics) to leave the demo mode.

Have you fed that back to them in their channel in here?

I do not agree that it is too easy to leave in scramble mode, the bright green bar along the top while it is turned on is enough for me!

Personally I only care about the amounts being hidden, so isn’t an issue to see the transaction details. I can see how that is a further iteration though.

Not yet, but I will do at some point.

To point out when you get paid your salary the notification doesn’t specify the amount anymore.

If I need to show someone the app I just turn the phone away at the parts I don’t want them to see. I can see how it’s awkward though.

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Unless you had to send yourself £200 on the 1st to reset the summary and therefore your ‘actual salary’ isn’t marked as salary! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Unable to link it to PocketSmith. This is my main app for budgeting across all my bank accounts both in the UK and abroad. It works wonderfully well for all major banks in all the countries I have an account.

If I could add my monzo to PocketSmith then I would most likely replace my main UK account. Instead right now, monzo is no more than just a pre-paid account where I load a bit of money onto it for my trips to coffee shops and other little basic expenses.

Hi @No0dl3 I’ve never heard of PocketSmith but just checked it out, the reason Monzo is not on it (yet) is because it doesn’t look like PocketSmith use the Open Banking API and instead use a 3rd party service called Yodlee to scrape internet banking data - this is actually in breach of a number of banks terms and conditions. I’d recommend getting in touch with PocketSmith and asking what their plans are for moving to Open Banking API.

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Still prefer a brick and mortar where I can easily pop in to get help or call to speak to someone, rather than text and had to wait ages to ask a question etc.

Ouch $10/month for a spending breakdown

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@glasgow, Thanks. As far as I’m aware Yodlee isn’t actually in breach of any of the terms and conditions with my accounts in the UK. It was one of the things I checked before signing up to PocketSmith. With that said, I’m no lawyer… I’m going by my understanding of what I’ve read and my good friend Google. Do you have any specific information/example outlining the breach for your average UK current account at a major bank?

@M1cky, that was my initial thought too :smile: . But in my particular situation with multiple bank accounts in multiple countries, this was the best service I could find that wasn’t country specific.

I would expect the bank’s terms would disallow you from sharing your login details with anyone, so by sharing them with the account aggregator you are indeed in breach of terms.

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Also PocketSmith have this in the FAQ section “Your password is not stored as ‘clear-text’ in the database. We store a hash of the password instead, which cannot be reversed back into your actual password.” If the hash can’t be reversed how could it be used to login to persons account? You can’t login to a persons bank account with a hashed version of the password

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@M1cky, I don’t have visibility to their integration/interfaces, but from what I see, it’s simply a mechanism of matching it to the credentials stored on Yodlee’s service. i.e. PocketSmith have no mechanism of reading/decrypting the hashed/encrypted password.

@anon23935806, I’m not sure about that one. I might need to contact my bank to confirm. As far as I remember, they just dissolve their responsibility in case of losses. i.e. it’s up to the customer to decide if they’re comfortable with a third party like Yodlee storing your credentials.

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I don’t think this is true. Basing this opinion on the following:

Your banking terms and conditions should not prevent you from sharing your credentials with regulated AIS or PIS providers. Your bank cannot hold you responsible for unauthorised transactions just because you have shared your credentials with regulated AIS and PIS providers

Companies that have been providing these services since before 12 January 2016 don’t need to be authorised by us until the end of 2019, so may not yet appear on the register.

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13 Reasons Why:

  1. Lack of support for incoming international payments
  2. Being able to pay in cash
  3. Being able to pay out big amounts of cash
  4. No payment confirmation/single transaction statement that can be generated (neither in app or by chat)
  5. Waiting times for chat approx. 3h
  6. No possibility to top up using a Polish bank card
  7. Dislike the UI for payments in general (I mush prefare Starling or Revolut in that case)
  8. No overdraft offered (Two other banks gave me overdrafts but I accepted only one)
  9. Overdraft fees (my current overdraft is free)
  10. Don’t trust the card to be accepted everywhere (had problems in Spain where with other MasterCard I could pay with no problem)
  11. No Mastercard 3D secure (I wanted to book an airplane ticket but couldn’t without 3D)
  12. More expensive international transfers than Revolut
  13. Categories not working as well as they should (e.g. petrol stations)

Sidenote: I actually haven’t watched ‘13 Reasons Why’ is it any good?

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