Why? Amex allow their account data to be shown in apps such as Yolt and Emma, I don’t really see how this would be any different. Like I said, if monzo could integrate with Amex, I would do all my spending on my Amex as opposed to just a subset of it now.
I’d like to think Monzo are mature enough as a business to sell this to Amex as a positive for both businesses, rather than a “hack” as Amex may have seen Curve as.
The situation at Curve is far removed from any integration that Monzo would do. Curve are actually charging the Amex card, and seemingly without the full approval of Amex.
To make Monzo 100% more useful for me, all they need to do is bring the transaction data into the Monzo app so I can genuinely see all my spending in one place.
Please don’t allow the goings-on at Curve to slow down any Monzo integration!
I think Monzo would handle it much better than Curve. Monzo is the first bank i would leave Lloyd’s for and I’ve been a Lloyd’s customer all my adult life.
I suppose it depends what level of integration there is. If it’s just a case of hooking into Amex (or any other provider) via open banking APIs, then logic for moving money around being on the Monzo side, then i can’t see Amex being too bothered. This would also have the bonus of - in principle - working for any credit/charge card, so not being Amex specific.
But if it requires a bespoke contract and/or integration work on the Amex side, I’d say forget it. There are probably other providers more incentivised and better set up for this type of thing…
Based on the original post (and from what I remember reading since) this should all be possible without any work on Amex’s side - which would require a bespoke contract Amex would be unlikely to agree to, as you say.
Monzo should be able to view all Amex transactions using the Open Banking API, allow user categorisation/auto-categorisation which would then count towards the budgets in summary. The user could then decide to setup an auto payment each week/fortnight/month to pay the balance via faster payments.
I would however question whether this is worthwhile for Monzo rather than Amex, as it is Monzo who would be losing out on interchange fees.
I agree on the general premise, but…
… I thought that the open banking regs only cover current accounts at the moment - which is why folk like Emma (the app) still use a screen scraping approach. Would be fantastic to be wrong, though.
If Monzo wants to become a financial hub / control centre it’ll have to tackle this sooner or later. My sense is that - as long as other revenue streams come online - the interchange fees aren’t significant enough to matter in the big / end-game scheme of things.
I think the plan is for Open Banking to be expanded to non-current account products, but you’re right that we’re not there yet. I guess a screen scraping approach would need to be used in the meantime.
The main reason companies like Yolt, MoneyDashboard and even Android and Apple Pay do what they do for free, it’s that they gather your data anonymised and sell spending trends and general purchasing data insights with their clients.
I’m a strong supporter of the use of my anonymised data in exchange for ‘free’ services type agreement.
Having said that, Monzo only have to gain from integrating with the main stream financial services that provide open banking such as Amex. After all, if Monzo is ever to cross that profitability line, market spending data insights could be an important part of revenue.
Would also help Monzo to get a better credit score information for their users by gathering this data in order to provide a more precise marketplace service based on credit score without having to use legacy not so precise systems such as Experian or similar.
Go Monzo!
I’m a little late to the party on this one, but read through some of the ideas here and as an AMEX user for the majority of my monthly spend, I would love this as a feature!
There is no reason why it has to be limited to AMEX cards and it would be a responsible way for Monzo to promote the use of credit cards if every transaction was accumulating in a pot and then the direct debit to pay the balance in full was assigned to the same pot. Presumably Monzo could promote the credit cards they support in the market place and earn a commission if Mono users apply for the cards though he Monzo app.
I’ve been having a go at this today, not having much luck! 
Everything seems to be set up ok, and the key is correct but for some reason it is not working…
My main issue I think was with Siri shortcuts. Have you tried using this version?
Got it working now - thanks! 
Just posting to say thank you for this. Works lovely.
I know this is an old post but I’ve just started looking at Truelayer to try and grab other bank account details to manage my Monzo account through their own API.
Is Truelayer effectively free for solo developers if they stay within the ‘DEVELOP’ pricing plan?
Does ‘Sandbox with live bank accounts’ mean I can add my own accounts and refresh / pull data freely? 
Yep
Nice, my Monzo app can now see my Amex balance so I can start automating 
Is this only available on apple?
Just realised that you can’t access joint pots from the api so my plan has been scuppered 
If they exposed the balance through the API as well that would be amazing 
