I’ve been on the waiting list for a Monzo business account since pretty much day one. I was happy to see a push notification appear on my phone saying I’m eligible for a business account. I quickly started the set up process, entered all of my details, reviewed the account documentation and made my way to the final set up screen to be greeted with a message along the lines of “you’re not eligible for a business account, but we’re slowly rolling them out and we’ll let you know when they’re available”.
Why send me a push notification about being eligible when I’m not? Anyone else had this?
Jack here - from the Business Banking team at Monzo. I’m really sorry for the trouble, we totally understand that it’s really disappointing to have waited for so long, then get a notification, have the opportunity to sign up, and then be told that you’re still not eligible.
We’re inviting a small number of businesses to sign up gradually. Because we need more information than we asked for when we opened the waitlist, we’re inviting businesses to sign up and give us all the information we’d need to give them a bank account (which we didn’t collect when you joined the waitlist earlier in the year). We’re still being very restrained on signing businesses up for now, because it’s really important to us that we’re giving you the best experience possible - so if we’re not convinced we can do that straight away, we’re holding fire a little longer before we know we can.
We’re still really early in our business account journey, and we’ve still got lots to learn - so we’re doing just that. So I’m sorry you’ve had to have that initial excitement, only to be let down for now. But, as soon as we’re ready, we’ll absolutely let you know.
We’re also going to make this a lot clearer, so everyone knows where they stand whilst we’re still slowly rolling out accounts, because we appreciate that this is a little confusing at the moment
I’ve just gone through the sign-up process and been told “We can’t offer you an account just yet” — that’s fine, I understand.
I noticed there weren’t any questions in the sign-up process that asked what the Monzo account would be used for: all the questions appeared to apply to the business as a whole. Is this correct? I answered the turnover question with the ex-VAT turnover of the whole business, for example, even though the amount of money going through the Monzo account would probably only be 1/10 of that.
I think this was the main gripe for me. There has been little explanation of what they’re actually looking for. Some simple pre-qualification statements (“we’re not accepting applications from businesses with less than £x in turnover” or “businesses in X category aren’t currently eligible for an account”) would have cleared this up for me. Telling me I’m eligible, letting me work through the whole application process and then telling me I’m not eligible doesn’t represent the great user experience that I’ve become used to.
Keep your eyes peeled here and on the blog!