Thanks for such a detailed response, I’ll definitely take a look at Barclays. I currently have a personal account with NatWest and have previously been with both HSBC and Co-op, while my other half has always been with Halifax.
We are hoping to buy a house this year so would like to get everything set up over the next few months.
Just a couple of notes:
I doubt either of these is really going to be too important in the end of the day, but you may wish to keep this mind. Additionally, I had difficulty opening a new bank account for the first few months after moving, as my new address wasn’t yet reported to any of the reporting agencies.
Just reiterating what others have already said: joint accounts are a must.
And there would be great things about Monzo joint accounts I’m sure, separating spending out and seeing which cards paid what would be really handy. I’m even wondering if spending limited cards would be a great way to give people like kids a way to access money too.
A must for this year Monzo!
This article raises a very good point regarding joint accounts I think. Why could you and your partner not have separate Monzo accounts and use an account aggregation service (of which there seem to be myriad popping up) to analyse spending as a whole? .
I suppose this is dependant on what advantage a traditional Joint Account gives, which I would be interested to hear about.
I recognise that this may not solve for a couple that have uneven earnings. Are there other key advantages?
I don’t see at all how this affects joint accounts. I think Keith expressed this above better than I ever could (I recommend reading the full post):
It is entirely reasonable that this is not the case for all couples. But it is this way for us. Thus this isn’t about aggregating, about advantages or disadvantages. It is about my wife and myself being one. In every way. Including financially. And I don’t want to artificially split that up. (And that’s before we even get to the question of the death of one of us, were joint accounts do have a clear advantage.)
I agree, its not about aggregation its about the money being “ours” therefore in an account that we both have access and control over. Any spending is joint in that either of us can access the money for any purpose.
Search the thread for ‘probate’ and you’ll see why.
Or if you don’t want to search:
With a joint account, if one person dies the other person still has full access to the money in the account.
With two separate accounts, if one person dies then the other person has to jump through hoops before they can access the money in the account. At best, it’s an unnecessary inconvenience when you have many other things on your mind; at worst, it could be six months or more before you can access the money if probate is required. If you’re living off this money, that’s a huge problem.
I have decided Monzo is the ONE card/account I want to use. I will cancel my credit card and old bank account to use just Monzo. However, without a joint account feature this cannot happen. My wife and I work together so our income is from the same place in one amount! I’m not going to start splitting this up for his and her’s accounts. So Monzo is my “abroad” card for holidays until this joint issue is fixed, I’m afraid Lloyds does a better job for now!!
Hi, was wondering if I can convert my Monzo account to a joint account for my wide and I?
You won’t be together much longer if she hears you calling her that!
But no, currently joint accounts are not available, although apparently they are on the way at some point…
Short answer - no.
Slightly longer answer - one day you will probably be able to.
So, I know that there are many, many threads on this, but my question isn’t about the “how?” of the implementation, it’s more on the “when?”. There seems to be no mention of joint accounts on the Monzo Transparent Roadmap, which is confirmed by the blog post on The Year Ahead, 2018. Now, I know that everyone has their pet idea that they think is more important than all the other ideas, but I would like to argue that this idea is objectively very important - you only have to look at how many times it has been raised here (and those are just the times people have raised it as a topic, there are plenty more hits if you search) to see that it is a burning issue. In fact, no other issue (apart from what colour the cards should be) has more responses if you search the ideas category. While Monzo has opted to get other providers to manage major parts (mortgages, savings, …) of the traditional banking experience via the forthcoming marketplace, this isn’t possible with joint accounts - they form part of the core banking experience.
So, my question is: why on earth is this not anywhere on the roadmap?
I think Monzo are still unsure how they want to approach this. There are 2 main ways they could do this, have a traditional joint account, or have joint pots where each user has their own account but the pots are shared. I think Monzo are still looking into the different ways so can’t give a firm answer if they will be offering a “joint” account as we currently know it. At least that’s how I’ve taken it. Hope that helps!
Presumably because Monzo aren’t sure that they’ll build them in the next 12 months. There has been a lot of requests & they are planning to set them up but they need to put the foundation in place first -
it looks like there’s going to be some more changes to Pots first.
There’s also other features that’re a higher priority -
I’m quite aware of that blog post - notice that I have actually referenced it in my post above. I’m directly challenging the idea that this is not a priority for (even at the least) the next year if it’s the most discussed feature, and requested over and over again by users.
Yes, Monzo are planning to do this via “shared pots” - though a shared pot that has an account number and can do direct debits… sounds a lot like a joint account. So let’s get past the naming because that’s a red herring. The issue is that despite joint accounts being a crucial feature, it’s not mentioned at all in the blog post, nor in the transparent roadmap. In fact, the only mention even of pots on the roadmap is “Rules for Pots” in the “Medium Term (Next 6—12 Months)”.
TL;DR: Joint Accounts / Shared Pots are not currently a high priority, and they should be.
I can understand why some people think this way, but I’m very happy they are not, as I have no use for them 
Clearly this is a pet idea for more people than most, given how often it has come up.
But flicking through the blog post I disagree that this should be a number one priority. The majority of the features discussed focus on two things - improving the usability of existing features (eg spending and targets which are essentially broken until incoming payments can be categorised and month start altered) or making Monzo a more sustainable business.
I think a lot of people would be disappointed if a more complex feature like Joint accounts were priotised over improving basic features that are used by the majority of users.
Yes, as I say: so many people clamouring for it is the basis of the argument that it should be prioritised higher.
It seems that feature development over the whole next year will consist of: some general cleanup of existing features, Current Account Switching (CASS), Android feature parity, and “Partnerships”. It feels like somewhere amongst those items could, and probably should be the most requested feature in the ideas forum. Should Monzo build out a marketplace before they have a joint account? Should Monzo drive more growth through CASS before they have joint accounts? More users just means more people who will ask for them. I’d also wager that Monzo has already mopped up most of the growth that they are going to get from young people in Shoreditch (mostly in their '20s), and will require joint accounts as a basic feature to service the rest of the market (people in their '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s, …)
Just so that we are on the same page, I have broken it down in detail. The smaller features are:
[DD = Direct Debit; SO = Standing Order; FP = Faster Payment]
Bills:
* Move location of DDs & SOs in the app
* Better DD merchant information
* DD notifications
* Reuse past references for FPs & SOs
* Allow edits to SOs
* Remember categories assigned to DDs, SOs & FPs
Targets and Spending:
* Custom start dates
* Account for recurring expenses and split bill payback
Other:
* PDFs of bank statements
I don’t want to diminish the work involved - I am a programmer myself and I know that seemingly simple things can blow up in your face (while seeming complex things can crumble into insignificance, too). However, to me many of them seem more like bugfixes for a day or two’s work, rather than top-level items on the year-long roadmap. Editing SOs? Reuse past references? These are small changes. I get that they are in this blog post because the small annoying things often end up as high-profile issues. But I am highlighting the fact that while there are a number of things here, none are giant new features.
Then there are three things that seem genuinely “large”, compared with the items above:
* Implement the CASS (Current Account Switching Service)
* Android feature parity (pulse, targets, fingerprint)
* "Partnerships"
CASS does seem sensible, given that it makes changing your main account to Monzo rather frictionless - but as mentioned, I think it’s better after joint accounts. It would be great to have Android feature parity, though I doubt that the iOS team will be sitting on their hands. It sounded like they staffed up the Android team, though I wonder if they ran headlong into Brooks’ Law. And then there is that whole “Partnerships” thing.
I am ignoring ending the prepaid programme and enabling overdrafts for more people, because for these two features - the current account and the overdraft facility - are working in production already. They’re not large new features to develop.
Finally we have pots, which is the thing most linked to joint accounts. The blog post mentions implementing both Rules (money in) and Payments (money out), though sadly the Monzo Transparent Product Roadmap doesn’t have any mention of the latter; perhaps that is telling.
What’s the TL;DR? When you go into the details it seems, to me at least, that joint accounts should be further up on Monzo’s agenda.
I’m sure Monzo can come to terms with that.
If that’s true, they know that because users will have told them so when they called them to ask why they’ve not switched from the prepaid account.
You’ve just put custom timeframes, which feed into the Pulse Graph, Targets & presumably income tracking, down as a small item when because of those dependencies it’s not. As you say, you should know better than to try & guess what’s easy & what’s hard.
That’s one example of a key change that’s been prioritised first & they need to get the basics sorted first before they work on the hard stuff - joint accounts are really hard because of the legal complexity.