Now this would be handy, no?
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I am so intrigued to know how this works, assuming the subscriptions are CPAās, a number of Monzo staff on here have voiced how difficult they are to stop
Would love to know more
Edit: Looks like they use a Finnish FinTech: https://minnatechnologies.com/ Silly me to think Lloyds were innovating
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Iām guessing the likes of Amazon might baulk at it
if you find a news article where the screen shots are more readable like here: https://minnatechnologies.com/2020/07/13/lloyds-bank-adds-subscription-management-service-to-its-mobile-app-in-partnership-with-minna-technologies-and-visa/
There are some concerning things that back up what Monzo staff have said on here in the past:
In some cases it might not be possible to cancel the subscription.
How it works
We block the payments, this should take effect within 24 hours.
Basically itās not going to work most of the time, and when it does, they donāt actually cancel anything, they just stop them taking money, thereās a big difference
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If thatās all it is then, as I said in the other thread discussing this, I think theyāve mis-labelled this quite badly.
Selling Direct Debit closure as a Subscription Cancellation service is very misleading and could lead to trouble for customers. I hope thereās more to it than this.
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I hope there is too, obviously thatās what they put customer facing, hopefully there is more to it behind the scenes but I struggle to see how there could be
Most companies wonāt deal with 3rd parties for account issues for a very good reasonā¦ we wonāt even talk to someone who isnāt on the contact list from the same company. I just canāt see this working.
I donāt think this is direct debit cancellation but rather cancellation of recurring card payments.
Netflix, Spotify and the like will indeed just stop the service if they canāt take the payment so no big issues there, but not sure about food subscriptions or similar - would they pursue you for breach of contract? Possibly, especially if they take payment after preparing to ship a box
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Thereās a lot more information about it all on the 3rd party providers website
Better than nothing. They are upfront that some canāt be cancelled that way, and it looks like they work with the company to cancel the subscription, with an update available on the current status of the subscription.
For most people this will work fine (Spotify, Netflix etc). You could find a hole or exception in almost any initiative.
Good on them; I wonāt stomp on a company at least trying something.
As for them using another firmās software; why not? Plenty of companies do it, including the large companies like Google and Apple. Pretty standard stuff.
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Usually a single payment is too small to be worth it. Itās why some sharp operators roll subscriptions into payments every six months, then itās an amount worth pursuing and enough to scare customers.
Itās all very well banks innovating. The politicians need to pull their fingers out. Simple improvements, like a statutory 5 or 7 day notice period before the next payment/cancellation date, would have a huge impact.
Depends on the frequency of the subscription, wouldnāt really work on a 7 day subscription!
So, I got a tip from a friend about this thread. Iām Design Team Driver at Minna and just wanted to give some more details since there seems to be some questions. Hope itās ok I jump in here 
We do support cancellations from both credit card and debit accounts. If itās paid through card we could also block the future payments, but we focus on proper cancel the subscription for the user.
How: The consumer signs digitally a Letter of attorney and we (Minna) can act for the consumer. We have built tools and a workflows that connects the service provider to that order, allowing the consumer to get status updates and information regarding cancellation date, if the contract is bound in some way we handle that informing the user and can create reminders for when you can cancel etc.
The end outcome is a proper cancelled subscription, where you get tracking like it was something you ordered online, and we also provide customer service helping you if there are any questions etc.
I hope that gave you a better understanding of the cancellation product.
We are up and running with our product in several markets and have been doing it for 3-4 years.
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That sounds like it could potentially be abused
Good question/point.
We take security and trust as our no.1 priority.
Since we are integrated in a bank, with a signed in user, we have methods to verify the user so you canāt steal someones identity and cancel for example your exās subscription.
Do you have a set list of subscriptions you are able to cancel? (donāt need the actual list, just interested in if you (Minna) have to manually add subscriptions to a list and it only works with these set subscriptions?)
It depends on how itās integrated into the bank. If the bank detects the subscriptions itās up to that solution, but we also have a product called āidentifyā that is a subscription detection algorithm that will find subscriptions based on transaction data in combination with other sources. If that is combined with our cancel product we can find and cancel your local gym if you want.
Two more questions if thats OK!
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You might not be able to answer, but worth asking, are Lloyds using āidentifyā too?
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Just so itās super clear and I fully understand, is your process as follows?
- Get an instruction from the user to cancel said subscription
- Draft up a legal letter instructing the subscription service to cancel the subscription for the customer
- send it to the company and let the customer know it is mid cancellation
- parse the response and inform the customer (no response after x days, successfully cancelled, further communication & issues arrisen e.t.c.)
If thatās correct, how do you know if the subscription has indeed been cancelled but you havenāt heard anything back?
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No worries, but after this I need to leave. Can try to check in after the weekend if needed.
To be honest, Iām not sure what I can say about our other collaborations since this is just announced. I hope you understand.
Regarding 2: Itās complex to explain in a thread like this, there are a lot of different outcomes and end states regarding a cancellation. The short story is, we can handle them. A lot thanks to weāve to been working with this and improving the product for a good while now. We have a customer rating of 4.8/5 and hopefully that shows for something
I hope I could give some clarity at least in the topics above and I hope you all have a great weekend!
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