Introducing Monzo Flex – a better way to pay later 🚀

[Peter_G]

Now I don’t know and I’m just guessing based on what’s been said.

@Paulw

do you mean Flex will be its own account, separate to the personal account?

I’m assuming so. I’m hoping that might mean its own feed and the ability to select it in Trends.

@Paulw

but I’m still perplexed at what point there is a spend recorded if all payments are transfers and that is hidden from spending

Again, just an assumption, but I think it would work like Pots. So you know how there are actually two feeds for pot transfers now: one to/from the current account and one to/from the Pot?

I think that the purchase will show in the Flex feed with a category. And the payments to/from the current account will be transfers. That’s to make sure that there’s no double counting. But the problem is that there’s no counting at all right now, because the Flex feed (with transactions with categories on) isn’t a thing.

Another analogy might be a connected credit card. You want to count each individual transaction in the connect account and not the payment of the credit card (because then you’re counting twice).

That’s my assumption at least. Does that make sense?

[j06 (Jamie)]

As a non–Flex user: What an effing mess.

[davidwalton (Award Winning Hot Coral Analyst)]

@Peter_G

That’s my assumption at least. Does that make sense?

That makes total sense and mirrors what happened with pots to make ‘proper’ pots statements.

I predict Flex will have its own dynamic feed and also be selectable in Trends
I also think this will happen quickly, as in mega-

[Peter_G]

@davidwalton

I predict Flex will have its own dynamic feed and also be selectable in Trends

Such a mystic

@davidwalton

I also think this will happen quickly, as in mega-

Before Christmas?

Really needs to be given Category Gate.

But equally, major change before Christmas… Nervy…

[MalaiseForever (Ethan)]

I started on £1000, then they upped it to £3000. Just out of curiosity I checked now based on your post, and was offered to increase my limit to £6000.

So I would suggest, if you use it and don’t miss any payments for a couple months your limit would increase quite quickly.

[mikez]

I was given £1000 limit when I first took out Flex and never been able to increase it, despite paying everything on time. Obviously it depends on other things too.

@ndrw - possibly due to all the hard searches from your account switching?

[_Tom]

I dont even have Flex

[j06 (Jamie)]

Neither do I. It’s easier to just use Klarna on the very rare occasions I think it might be useful.

[mikez]

I’ve taken out a Virgin Slyce card rather than Flex because they gave me a decent credit limit. I don’t really need it but I like to play with these things

It’s a bit different to Flex and Klarna in that you split your monthly statement between 3, 6, 9 or 12 payments (3 and 6 are interest-free) rather than individual purchases. I thought it might be useful for things like car & house insurance which usually charge you to pay by instalments.

[_Tom]

From the video I watched made by Virgin explaining how it works it doesn’t seem to be how you described it.

Just exactly how Flex and BNPL works, maybe I misunderstood it?

[Paulw (Paul)]

Ah yes it does, thanks. Sounds like Monzo have done it arse about face then Let’s hope it gets addressed soon.

[mikez]

@_Tom

Just exactly how Flex and BNPL works, maybe I misunderstood it?

I think you must have. You don’t make any repayment decisions until you get your monthly statement. There is then a “payment window” for a few days where you can decide whether you want to pay the balance in full, or over 3, 6, 9 or 12 months. If you don’t do anything, the balance will be put on the 12-month plan. You can also add extra if you want to pay things off more quickly.

If the statement balance is less than £30, it’s taken in full.

[Carlo1460]

I thought 5mil was surpassed?

[Anarchist (Press ‘Help’ search ‘Contact us’ or email help@monzo.com or call 0800 802 1281)]

Maybe only 5 million actually trust Monzo!?

[Peter_G]

@Peter_G

Speaking of which, no one has come back to me on this in the app yet. I’ve had two responses telling me that they’re busy and they need to pass it on. But no substantive response.

If @TomMills hadn’t popped on here I’d probably been rather cross by now. But I’m just curious as to when/if they’ll get back to me and what they’ll say.

So I had a reply this afternoon!

Feels… familiar…

Hello [name] from the lending team here. We’re really sorry that it’s taken so long to get back to you! We’re dealing with an unprecedented demand for support in our department right now.

I’ve had a look into this and I’m sorry if this has caused any inconvenience - let me explain what’s happened.

You’ve hopefully seen the latest updates to Trends, with the launch of Targets earlier this month context if you haven’t. We had lots of feedback from early testers that Flex wasn’t interacting with Targets well, and it was actually making budgeting harder than before. So we recategorised Flex repayments to transfers so that Trends works as intended.

We’re now working towards making Flex it’s own account in Trends. This will give you all the visibility you previously had including categorisation, and full control over whether you want Flex included in targets or not.

I don’t have a date for when Flex will be in Trends just yet. But we’re working on it.

You can go back and recategorise your Flex repayments if you want - but I appreciate that’s going to be a fair bit of admin. If you can, I’d suggest leaving it as it is until we launch Flex Account in Trends.

I hope this clears things up but if not please feel free to reach out with any questions

So they’ve actually engaged with the issue, but feels rather generic. I can forgive that. That’s said, a few days to get that response? Feels a bit too little, too late.

(I’m resisting a quip about them being less busy if they didn’t make breaking changes that weren’t communicated, but we are where we are).

[Alexxxxx (>50 categories pls)]

@Peter_G

This will give you all the visibility you previously had including categorisation, and full control over whether you want Flex included in targets or not.

I don’t have a date for when Flex will be in Trends just yet.

Yeah I still can’t for the life of me understand how this was decided on… Complete removal of functionality without any warning and with no date for reinstatement!

[RoreEricaOkoh]

Morning everyone, we’ve been following the conversation closely and understand the frustration that we’ve recategorised Flex payments without letting you know in advance, we’re sorry about that. Following on from @TomMills’ last post, I wanted to acknowledge the feedback on targets and apologise on behalf of everyone working at Monzo.

We recategorised Flex payments in response to feedback on targets

Flex payments were previously included as spending in Trends but after testing targets, it was clear that Flex wasn’t working as people expected. Targets was showing each monthly Flex payment as discretionary spend, for example 3 x £20 monthly payments against Shopping.

Flex users told us they saw payments as committed spend, like a loan repayment

But Flex payments were being included in targets as discretionary spend. So people couldn’t rely on whether they were on track for the month without working out whether they had an upcoming Flex payment.

We’ve decided it’s best to build Flex as its own account in Trends

This will give everyone who uses Flex greater control and visibility going forward, such as the ability to include Flex spending in targets, or not.

This will take time to build. So we had to decide whether to delay launching targets or not.

We thought it would be better to go ahead and launch targets, to give everyone who uses Monzo a great money management tool. And we’d build Flex as an account quickly after.

We know that for some of our users this will impact the categories and money management processes you have set up and we’re sorry for the frustration this will cause while we properly integrate Flex with Trends.

To lessen the confusion about Flex payments in targets, we decided to temporarily reduce the visibility of Flex in Trends by recategorising Flex repayments as transfers

Doing that means targets works for discretionary spend as people expected.

However in the short term, it means Flex doesn’t work with Trends properly. We should’ve let you know about that in advance, as well as our plans for Flex having its own account in Trends.

The best thing to do for now, is to manually re-categorise your Flex payments

We’re sorry, we know this isn’t an ideal solution and it’s time consuming. We’re working on giving you visibility of Flex payments in Trends as quickly as possible.

The Flex and Trends teams are working hard to make this happen. As soon as we have a date for it to go live, we’ll let you know.

We’ll also let you know when an early version of Flex in Trends is available to test in Labs so we can use your feedback to make it the best it can be.

Thank you all for your continued feedback and support

[Egghead (Dan)]

So I have seen the Promotion offer pop up today - it asks me to update my app to the latest version

When I click to update the app it takes me to the Google Play store… I am on IOS app 5.5.0

Any suggestions on why it’s doing this / how to sort?.

[Revels]

@RoreEricaOkoh

Targets was showing each monthly Flex payment as discretionary spend, for example 3 x £20 monthly payments against Shopping.

Flex users told us they saw payments as committed spend, like a loan repayment

But Flex payments were being included in targets as discretionary spend. So people couldn’t rely on whether they were on track for the month without working out whether they had an upcoming Flex payment.

I think it’s both. It is committed spend that I need to repay, but it’s also £20 against Shopping each month.

I really don’t agree with what you’ve done and how you’ve done it, but I do appreciate the updates about it.

[Revels]

@Egghead

Any suggestions on why it’s doing this / how to sort?.

Go to the app store and update your app. You don’t have to click the link.