Noted. Of course, thinking about it, the flexibility to accept joint payments is in the bank’s control so that may work out. On the other topic, I don’t know whether the ‘Partnership or Equals’ is a legal definition so, while I understand the concept, I’m not informed enough to be sure it does what I want of it.
Time will tell so I’m relatively relaxed for the beta period.
Here’s Tom’s latest comment on how the joint accounts will (probably) work -
What about when your buying birthday presents for your wife, a single account with two people accessing them the other will find out what your buying or how much coffee I buy!
Ok but how is that different from using a joint account to purchase the presents?
Joint account is for household purposes, mortgage, council tax, kids, food etc… plus the added benefits of insurance, phone cover and breakdown as it’s much cheaper for us to pay £10-15 a month for all three insurances rather than closer to £30.
The sole accounts are separate and this is personal transactions.
To be fair, that’s your model of how joint accounts are to be used, it certainly isn’t everyone’s.
That’s the idea with the pots feature. You will have some pots that only you can access, and some that are shared with one or more other people. Presumably/hopefully, you will be able to assign payments (e.g. direct debits) to come from specific pots.
From my understanding of the pots model you should be able to have more than one. And those pots can be shared but don’t have to be. And should also provide the flexibility of sharing different pots with different or multiple users. In many ways it does feel like joint account 2.0
What I’m not sure about is where the actual pots sits. Will all users equally own the pot or is it owned by the user setting it up? Where would you put a joint payment like a joint mortgage or loan. You this be in a equally owned shared pot or a single users pot shared with the user the item is jointly owned with?
I think what @jtame said s a really common use for joint accounts.
At the beginning of each month my wife and I each have some money transfer via standing order to our joint. We have the mortgage, insurances, Netflix etc come out of there.
Legally that money belongs to both of us, I wonder how that will work with a joint pot?
I think shared pots means each person has their own Monzo account but they both contribute to it. So buying personal presents would be in your own account and your partner wouldn’t be able to see it, unless you spend from that pot specifically. And given how you described it- expenses, bills, groceries- I doubt you would use part of their money to purchase a present for them.
Quite a bold statement to make. Do you have any metrics to back this up? Just a quick poll around my office, shows this to be in common use.
I agree with this too. I suspect most of Monzo users are not the typical use case in the early stages, if anything more are most likely edge cases.
The legal benefits of joint accounts are of paramount importance to me. For instance, if all my money was in a sole account in my name, and I died tomorrow, my wife would have the hassle of going through probate to get access to that money, which would leave her and my children in financial hardship, during what is a long and drawn out process.
Making sweeping statements like in the original quote I highlighted are unfair and misleading. You can’t make an assumption about the needs of a banks customers, especially where you don’t have access to any real metrics on the subject.
Spot on here!
Monzo is going to be my personal CA and FirstDirect will be the Joint CA
Lloyds Avios for larger spends to get free flights.
Please bear with me, I haven’t had time to pull a proper reply together but I’ll explain my comment (with figures) 
I look forward to it.
He’s just stalling. He has no real answer for you 
in 2016, 24.1 million people in England and Wales who were married in 2016; this was 50.9% of the population aged 16 and over.
& since Google says there’s 65.64 million people living in the UK & 18.8 million are under 16 (ONS), roughly half (Monzo’s only available to over 18 year olds) of the population aren’t married.
That’s your subset of Monzo users who presumably don’t need the legal benefits of joint accounts.
We’ve seen that Monzo tends to release features cover the most common use cases, before iterating on the design later. That’s meant that users who don’t get paid on the 1st of the month or have the Android app, haven’t been able to use / had access to, all of the latest functionality straight away.
Since shared pots cover bill splitting for flatmates, users sharing expenses on holidays, parents managing their children’s money, couples who aren’t married etc. my guess is that this is the core functionality that will be released first before the legal status is added later, assuming it will be.
Obviously the legal status is a common use case & Monzo are aware of it so maybe it will be available in the first version of the feature. But you can imagine that it could add complexity..
In the meantime, users would still be able to also use their legacy bank’s joint account - as some Monzo users presumably do at the moment.
Surely being unmarried doesn’t exclude a couple from the case outlined above, that if one should die, the other (and any children) will find it difficult to access joint funds quickly and easily?
The legal securities of joint accounts don’t just apply to married couples, surely.
You may well be correct in all of your summarising but it will be a shame to have to close the account (or leave it dormant) after the preview stage and go back to First Direct.