Yes I have said this before but ya know logic n all that…
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It is fundamentally flawed because (for one reason or another) it is not the expected behaviour. It would be mitigated if they provided an in-app option to retry against the failure, but they don’t and just expect the user to contact the originator. This is an exceptionally poor UX for a bank that prides itself on a human centric approach.
In regards timing, I suspect almost everyone would prefer the timing to be later - it doesn’t harm any existing users, but provides benefit to others. Again this is a poor design choice - and I suspect a strongly engineering led decision based upon simplified architectural design as opposed to the impact of the decision on the user.
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That’s true (and mine come out about from 5 days after payday to allow for any long bank holiday weekend to pass between). But as a challenger bank they should, ya know, challenge the legacy offering, not undercut it.
Quite frankly, if the big banks were exercising this behaviour, it wouldn’t surprise me. But it’s the legacy banks that are more consumer friendly than Monzo here, and that’s a massive missed opportunity.
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some DD dates you can’t change with some companies so people saying have your DD comes out after you get paid is nonsense, like myself I get paid weekly so sometimes DD can come out on the day I get paid so this can be a problem might get rejected before the money is in
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I have never had this issue with any company, I call them I ask them to take the money after x date they recalculate bill and make it so.
You’re lucky. I definitely have at least one direct debit that I was told could not be changed to any day other than the 1st. Even when I called them.
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some do yes and some don’t, all customers are saying this type of thing shouldn’t of been a problem in the first place because some people get paid different time of the day as some places use BACS and some use faster payment, so a DD retry cut off time to have cleared funds would be ideal for some its not everybody have an overdraft they can dip into
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Did you find out why so many DDs were declined?
I only have one DD on my Monzo account, and it’s for PayPal and hasn’t been used yet. I guess I’d better keep my PayPal balance in sufficient credit.
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well apparently monzo processing DD before BACS some are saying so therefore DD being rejected on payday.
That’s what I assumed, initially. But looking at the pulse graph, it looks like there have been plenty of funds in the account for some time. Clearly, the DDs (or at least one) could have been for large amounts - hence my query. Was it insufficient funds on pay day, or something else.
This is the reason I went back to using Starling. I had moved all my DDs over to Monzo.
I had an insurance payment declined because I didn’t have enough money in my account early in the morning. Despite having £325 come into my account at 9am on the same day, Monzo refused to reprocess the direct debit. After getting a £20 penalty and a black mark on my credit score I’ve now moved everything back to Starling.
These were standing orders…
On the first two occasions the recipient bank was down for maintenance… A legacy bank would keep retrying until it went through whereas Monzo tries once and that’s it otherwise you would get untold declined notifications.
On the last occasion the connection between Monzo and the recipient bank timed out so it failed and was therefore declined.
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Ah. Thanks for clearing that up. I suppose Monzo just expect you to make a manual payment?
I’d attack a problem like this with one of two approaches…
- Try one time (as now) and if it failed, then notify and provide a retry option which can be manually initiated (perhaps with a time limit, e.g. by 4pm the same day), otherwise it’s a “proper” decline.
- Try as now and upon failure, notify but then retry up to X number of times (or some other strategy, perhaps X times with a back-off approach) automatically. The key to this one would be for it to not notify about subsequent failures. If/when it subsequently succeeded, notify appropriately as normal and all is well. If it never succeeds at the end of the retry strategy, notify accordingly (and again, it’s a “proper” decline).
I’m not sure which would be the most suitable but I’d tend towards the second one. Of course, I don’t know the ins and outs of the behind-the-scenes nature of standing orders or direct debits so maybe there are other considerations which invalidate these ideas… 
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This is why they need to retry
I think the second option is better, with one modification: I wouldn’t notify on the initial failure. May as well retry X number of times throughout the day and notify on success, or failure only after the last retry.
Fair point, either way would work. The only reason I’d suggest keeping the initial notification is that we’re all used to the instant notifications and to just see nothing would be a little un-Monzo-like. I’d rather know the situation than be wondering exactly what’s happening.
The notification would need to be worded appropriately though… “(XXXX payment) has failed. It will be retried throughout (YYYY time period) and you will be notified of the final state”. Friendlier than that, but that kind of idea.
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When the were declined were you sent the notification at the time (middle of the night) or were they delayed to a more respectable time?
+1 I could not say this any better myself.
Monzo has so many advantages over legacy banks, but this is a real let down in my opinion.
It’s almost as if this got missed off the “going from beta to stable bank” to do list.
Would be great to get some official input from Monzo staff on the issue and what their plans are to address it.
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The notification comes in at the time (middle of the night).