I thought I’d jot down my initial thoughts and observations on the Monzo Plus implementation of Open Banking.
The Good
First of all, the process for connecting third party accounts is ridiculously easy and quick. In my experience 15 seconds or less per provider. I just selected Santander, was taken to the Santander app, sent back to Monzo, and my current and savings accounts were there all loaded up. It was exactly the same experience with Nationwide, except there are no savings accounts, but my current and credit card accounts loaded up.
There are two points of interest with the credit card. Nationwide, in their app, give you your credit limit, amount left to spend, and current balance. I use a spreadsheet to track my finances, and one trivial calculation required is to calculate the amount spent from these numbers. The Monzo aggregation only gives me the amount spent, the one piece of information Nationwide makes me calculate. With my Santander current account, the balance is the available balance, which takes into account any pending transactions.
Also, I’ve noted that Nationwide only ever shows transactions as cleared overnight. So I go to bed with one set of transactions, and wake up with some extra ones in the morning. Monzo shows me these recently settled transactions during the previous day.
The Bad
Not all providers are supported yet, and as above, not all accounts with providers which are supported are available. So, for me, no TSB or Marcus, and no Santander Monthly Saver or any Nationwide savings accounts.
I inadvertently connected two old savings accounts which were unused and empty. No problem, though, there is a ‘Remove Account’ button.
Except that removing the account isn’t all that the button does. The button removes the provider, so it removed all the accounts for that provider. It is fairly trivial to re add the provider, but it will then go to the end of the list.
The Ugly
The transaction feeds are very bare. Not only is there no enrichment, the feeds are walls of scrollable plain text on a white background. It seems very un Monzo to me. It’s quite difficult when scrolling to get a sense of how many days you are scrolling past as the date text looks very similar to the transaction text.
The transaction feeds aren’t searchable, either, which is a shame.
You can’t reorder the providers directly. The only work around is to add the providers in the order you want them to appear. So your accounts will be Monzo, Monzo Pots, Provider 1, Provider 2 from left to right. So if you want them reordered, delete them all, and re add them in the order you want.
The End
I initially signed up with the expectation that I would cancel it within two weeks, and while that still might happen, I think its just as likely that I’ll invest £15 over three months before I decide for sure one way or the other.