No physical card yet 
If they accept contactless (a lot of deposits allow you do use apple/ google pay) you should be able to use your virtual Flex card.
But if not, yes - making the purchase on your Monzo debit card and then moving the transaction to Flex should also work.
We realise this experience isn’t perfect!
Similarly turned down (ironically before more regulation kicked in, I was able to get Monzo loans and paid them back without incident) - likewise for Curve Flex (not before helping them debug their forms - haha).
Yet OpenPay (which was a pain in the arse to open because I unsubscribed to a mailing list of one of their other companies many moons ago and it took their tech team ages to figure out what went wrong). ClearPay and Amazon themselves are more than happy to let me pay in installments and every time I have done this, it’s all been paid back in time.
It’s not really a big deal that I can’t use Flex (Monzo or Curve) at this time as I have other options. I know why I am not accepted, and it’s a fair cop - but again, just a bit of an inconvenience for the time being.
Possibly because you have too much credit available or too many credit searches which may affect your outcome for flex.
Exactly. It’s all coming down slowly, thankfully. Will get there. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
After using Flex for a bit, I think I’m changing my mind about how Flex transactions are categorised.
The way it works at the moment means that the spend is reflected in Trends when you repay a Flex transaction, rather than when you first made it.
While I think you can make the argument both ways, I think for Trends I’d rather see the cost recognised when I first made the transaction. After all, that’s the way it works when you make a payment on your credit card on a connected account.
Practically, that means changing the way categories work: the “refund” money from Flex and the repayments would just be categorised as Transfers.
Quick straw poll:
0 voters
But it’s not a credit card and you’re only paying a fraction of the cost from your current account that month, which is a true reflection of spending.
Otherwise trends would be incorrect as you’ve not spent x amount, you’ve only spent 1/3rd of x.
This is why all accounting packages and companies produce cashflow report and balance sheet report.
Because when you made the purchase it affects your balance sheet in full straight away as committed spent.
But month by month cashflow is affected less, as it will be scheduled in each reporting period as future transactions (which are potentially offset against future expected income too).
Neither are “wrong” or “correct” and often one wants to see both to make decisions “can I afford something at all?” but also “when can I afford it?” Cause sometimes the answer is yes, but from next month.
Yeah totally. Ideally we’d be able to see both in Monzo, but I suspect that’s a level of complexity that Monzo probably doesn’t want to get into…
If it was a proper credit card sure. But it’s not. At its core, it’s still a buy now pay later via instalments product, however it seems on the surface. For that reason, I think it’s logical to show them in trends when you repay.
After all, that’s how it would be if you buy now and pay later with Amazon, or PayPal, or Klarna. You only see the instalments, and it’s the instalments that have any meaningful impact on your budget and spending, as opposed to the purchase itself.
I think this depends on how you use Flex. I’ve been paying out of my current account, which means you get an expenditure transaction and a refund transaction. So I don’t think what you saying is quite accurate. If the visual card transactions work differently, then I think you have a powerful point.
Does it not show as item full spend, and again item refund in same category and then flex x amount?
Going back to these insightful comments, I really think there’s a big gap in the market for someone like Emma (@edo1493) or Lumio (@CR_Lumio) to step in and do these advanced things.
Both apps show great promise but they need to go further and faster and tackle the niches we’ll never see in Monzo (and also take inspiration from Das Budget) imo.
It does. But this is the exact point.
Because there’s been a transaction line for the purchase and then a refund, I’m saying (for me, other views will reasonably vary) that I’d rather the refund not be in the same category but flagged as a Transfer, the same as the repayments.
If, as @N26throwaway suggests, the virtual card doesn’t have this shuffle then the alternative option is the right (and only?) one.
I’m team “when I repay it”
If that money hasn’t left my account, I haven’t paid it. So I don’t want it to reflect in a different week/month.
I’d prefer it this way as it’s how the transaction actually went, but I see your view.
I wonder if being able to add Flex as an account would resolve what you’re asking - don’t know if this is possible, but would involve a lot of transfer transactions to make it happen.
Giving this some more thought, I don’t think the answer is quite so obvious nor as simple as the one I hastily jumped to. It’s a tricky dilemma indeed, and one I’d need to find some extra free time to put some real thought into discussing. Remind me in two weeks!
I think for now I’m still in the when I repay flex camp. I’m a logical being and that feels most logical to me in this context. But I appreciate and realise it’s at odds with connected credit cards and isn’t quite so straight forward or simple. I can see things your way and could probably be convinced by your logic too.
You’ve provoked my brain into thinking (procrastinating) when it should be bug fixing ahead of an immovable deadline!
Edit: just taken another look at the poll results and given the brexit level division between us on this, the extra thought is justified. If Monzo start putting pro when you repay flex propaganda messaging on the side of their busses, I’ll change my vote to join the 48%.
Interesting, I’ve never heard of having too much credit available as a factor in declining an application, it’s somewhat antithetical to credit utilisation that’s more commonly referenced.
Too much credit available runs a risk of using it all at once and not paying it back or being able to afford it all, so it’s a considered factor.
If only more people put this much effort…
…Into this.
