Backstory of the problem:
I was on a night out last weekend and my friends were saying how they daren’t bring their contactless cards with them because they can spend recklessly when they’re tipsy Not good for me, because I hate cash.
Proposed solution:
I was thinking it’d be useful if, while sober, you can set a limit for what you can spend for that night. So in effect, I’d say ‘after £20 has been spent, freeze my card until 8am’.
Perhaps there could be some contingency (emergency pin/puzzle you can solve?) so that you can reverse this if necessary, but I’ve never spent ‘emergency money’ on anything other than extra chips.
I know Mondo is a prepaid card so technically you can do this yourself by only loading £20 on, but its a hassle to make sure you have exactly that amount left when you’re using it as your main card.
Does anyone else think this would be a useful feature?
Definitely useful! I’d love to know how we could lock it though? Anything too difficult and it’s useless in an emergency, anything too easy and you just turn it off while drunk
its a nice idea but in reality not sure it would work.
the process when out of buying a drink starts with the barman/maid making the drink and then asking for payment. if the mondo card was ‘half frozen’ it would mean you would have to pay for it one way or another.
the best solution i think is the budget feature in sneakpeaks. where after every transaction it makes sure you know you are over your budget limit!
If we were to have another category specifically for transactions at bars/pubs/clubs/etc then the time or GPS lock could be applied to just that one category until morning.
There’d also need to be a means of preventing you from manually changing the category after buying your drink. Sober me wouldn’t be happy with drunken me, but he would be impressed he thought of that while drunk
Emergency money for real emergencies would still be just as easily accessible as if no lock is in affect.
I think everyone has spent too much on a night out before, but does this need a technical solution?
I normally lose track of spending on nights out when I run out of cash and switch to card. The next morning finding numerous card receipts in my back pocket. However, as you can check your transactions/balance in real time in the Monzo app, this is already enough - for me at least.
Well I applaud your self control but myself and others may not be that good. Especially as Monzo is currently being heavily marketed to students, who typically love to get drunk and are on a tight budget.
I’m not a student anymore but I still occasionally have this problem. Drinking less often means I get drunk more easily and am more susceptible to overspending.
Self control? Rather my income has increased while my tolerance for alcohol has decreased.
I would not like to see anyone locked out of their account, due to emergency situations e.g. some one needs a cab to get home to safety.
Maybe an options to switch on a “drinking buddy notifications”? - updating you every few hours on your spend which is linked to bars. Kinda like the untappd app - after you have checked in 3 or 4 drinks it gives you a ‘drinking session’ badge or similar.
I’m not sure that you understand my idea correctly. I’ll explain it with a little more detail…
Transactions that take place at places where people often end up getting drunk, even tipsy, (bars, pubs, clubs, etc) can always be categorised under the “leisure” category, which currently doesn’t exist.
If it were to be made available and those types of venues get their transactions automatically selected as the new leisure category; Then that leisure category could be locked to a maximum spend until morning or reaching home. All other spending would be as normal even while the leisure category remains locked.
I’m not aware of the untapped app for drinking buddy notifications but it’s another direction to consider.
It has been suggested that Monzo will eventually create a Marketplace. I’m not entirely sure what this means but my guess would be an online only marketplace of integrations that third party developers can build and display in there.
Both ideas, yours and mine, may be better suited to that marketplace. They’d still be able to send notifications and, in the case of my idea, limit spending on that category.
My confusion here is why it is seen as necessary to have an emergency function.
If your friend chooses to not even take his card out as his way of restraining his spending, what emergency option does he have?
I think this would be a great feature, just a simple timed lock. A total lock until morning. If its an emergency well then it would be the same situation if you chose to leave your wallet behind or leave a card at home.
Ultimately it’s their choice but I think it’s a bit dangerous not having an emergency fund.
For instance if you decided to go out in a city that’s not your home town and if for some reason you miss the last train home then you’d be screwed without enough money to cover either a taxi or hotel for the night.
That use case for me would happen every few months. I’m a Kentish town lad with very few people who I’d feel comfortable asking to drive 50 miles to pick me up at 4 in the morning.
To avoid any confusion - I’m just about to merge a couple of duplicate topics into this one, to keep all of the discussion in one place. The first post from each topic will appear to have just been created - it’s timestamp will be now.
A thought I’ve been mulling over for a while now and decided I’d propose it to more people for thoughts/views.
How many times have you gone on a night out and spent waaaaay more than you wanted because you had a card to hand and just kept buying drinks because you could. What if/would it be doable if say you could set a spending cap on your Monzo card for a set period of time e.g. between Tuesday 10pm-3am you set a cap on spending of £30. The idea behind it being if you know at some point that you could be tempted to spend more than you really should then the card can physically stop you, be that a shopping trip, night out or whatever.
In my mind, I feel like this opens itself up to a whole load of potential issues but I think the premise behind the idea is justifiable. What are your guy’s thoughts?
Have a spending limit for certain time periods e.g £40 for a night out and then the card cuts out until the time period is over or if you loan your card to a friend/family for the day but don’t want them to go too crazy
There has been some discussion about this idea here
but it could cause issues
Once savings pots are available though, I expect you’d be able to set aside a certain amount of money for that night out / your family to spend which would make it easy to keep track of whether you’ve hit your limit or not. It’s a bit of a compromise but do you think that would that work for you?
According to the roadmap the savings pots are due in the next 6-9 months (after the launch of the bank & current accounts).
This enables the user to pay for their ride home but it still doesn’t solve the issue of a round of a round of drinks or a meal at a restaurant costing more than expected, particularly if
True, although how would we solve the same problem if we simply didn’t have enough in the account? I’d ask a friend and pay them back later.
With the case of an expensive round of drinks. The bartender usually takes some of the drinks off the bill and put them in a chiller if the full round can’t be paid for.
As for restaurants, I think they should stay categorised under eating out. You’d still be able to pay for the meal, but would also be in danger of spending all of your money getting drunk at the bar.
I’ll admit it’s not perfect, but is feasible.
Feasibility Update
Still needs more a lot more thought, or maybe just let the topic die
I think this feature could be very useful for a lot of users (me included ). In terms of an expensive round of drinks the limit could be semi-flexible; say you have £7 left in the leisure category before the limit is applied and the next round costs £9 then the card won’t decline it (presuming you have £9 in your card in total) but the card won’t let you make another transaction.
Another option is to let people apply for a ‘night out card’. Essentially a second card that is linked to your Monzo account but has specific limits. Again the semi-flexible limts can be applied. But this doesn’t solve the problem of emergency money and I suspect the effort required by Monzo and the user makes this a non-starter
Not good for me, because I hate cash.
). In terms of an expensive round of drinks the limit could be semi-flexible; say you have £7 left in the leisure category before the limit is applied and the next round costs £9 then the card won’t decline it (presuming you have £9 in your card in total) but the card won’t let you make another transaction.