I’ve put a strip of black electrical tape across the face of my joint card 
hard to miss and doesn’t come off like sharpie…
And no it doesn’t get stuck in cash machines (which I barely use)! 
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Monzo should fix this, rather than us having to put tape on our cards
I’m curious, is anyone else aware of banks where the joint account is nearly identical to the personal account card?
I still have a Smile joint account, though I’ve closed my old personal account. They have no differentiation at all between accounts other than card number. Monzo at least have the white strip at the top and the two embossed dots below the name.
Yes, Monzo should absolutely spend time and resources changing the joint card to cater for the small proportion of people who have a joint account and are incapable (for whatever reason) of seeing the difference between the two cards.
That seems like a sensible thing to do.
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It literally says ‘Joint Account’ on the card…
We’re all human and make mistakes sometimes but if you repeatedly fail to look at your card before you use it the solution might be a bit simpler than your bank changing the colour of all the JA cards…
That’s a bit harsh. It’s not a great user experience as it is, and it takes relatively little effort to make that kind of change. It was worse when business account cards were the same colour, at least that’s sorted. But the differentiation between c/a and j/a is minimal right now, and depending on orientation of card in your wallet may not be visible.
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The word relatively doing quite the heavy lifting in that sentence. Such a change would be quite far-reaching if you think about it.
IIRC business accounts used coral cards as a temporary measure until the business cards were available. I have a feeling the same approach was used for the joint cards when they were first introduced.
If orientation in the wallet is the issue, why not ask Monzo to provide the option of a portrait card (rather than landscape), instead of a brand new colour? Then it’s simply a case of getting the right card for your wallet needs.
Surely changing the colour or changing the orientation is similar work
If anything I would say changing the colour is the smaller change as it is only one thing
Whereas setting it to portrait would require reordering nearly everything on the card
I can’t see why if they decided to do it for business users, that it is such a crazy idea for joint account as well
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“Relatively”, for a change of colour, being a lot less “heavy lifting” than a redesign to a different orientation. Which would retain the problem for those with wallets of different orientation.
And I did use the word to acknowledge that there is some effort involved.
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Just ask yourself what the reason was for retaining the colour when designing the joint account card, and then ask yourself has this reason changed. There is more chance of a portrait card (as Monzo will eventually abandon embossed card numbers, which leads to this kind of rethink, as with Starling), than Monzo abandoning the Hot Coral signature colour, in my opinion.
Further down the line, a complete redesign is more than likely. As you say, cards with embossed numbers are slowly being phased out.
However, in the shorter term it doesn’t seem too big an ask to have some more differentiation. They could quite easily retain elements of hot coral, as you say its the signature colour though business cards only retain a more subtle hot coral core. As they’ve previously given the option of different card colours on Plus, I don’t see that it’s so radical an idea. But I don’t expect it to happen.
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Personally I think it was a mistake to move the business card away from Hot Coral (I know it has the core but not very obvious)
I think the cards should all be a high percentage of Hot Coral but still have a different colour, there was a really good looking one that was black and hot coral.
I think Monzo’s solution is Plus: you pay a fee if you want a different colour. 
Mine has two embossed dots on it too… Good for the blind/short sighted.
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Really? Are you worried your thumb might cover it? Try a dot in two corners.
That may be an option, but I wouldn’t pay simply for a different card colour. Whether or not any of the new Plus options will be compelling enough to have me part with money each month is a whole other debate 
Hey, I’m not defending it! But I think that’s part of the value proposition.
Personally, I’m hoping that if Plus is a big success and they can break even soon then common sense might prevail over things like this.
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Yes, I hope Plus is a success too. And it makes sense as part of the package to have differentiated cards for that. Hopefully we’ll find out before too long 
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Every other bank uses identical cards for sole and joint accounts. Starling and Monzo have proved that it’s possible to differentiate in the automated issuing process, but I’m sad they haven’t completely innovated, as I agree with you the differentiation is poor.
At the time, Monzo bleated that it was because Hot Coral was ‘the brand’ but then promptly issued a dog’s dinner of variants for Plus, and business accounts. The unissued metal cards were different again.
Only Monese, to my knowledge, has really innovated in this area in the UK.
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A bit of a side technicality, but when you personalise a Barclays card, the personalisation is unique to your card and the other account holder(s) can also choose their own designs.
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