Making Monzo: Cheque Imaging

As I’ve said we will just disagree on the matter.

Or they could decide “we already have the ability” but we don’t sign up to cheques as a system so we won’t continue to increase functionality for it where we could be doing something else.

For a bad analogy take say the “legacy” ports on old macbooks, they are now all gone in favour of one port. You can get a dongle that allows you to use those legacy ports, but the idea is that the rest of the market sorts itself out and moves to this one port as it can do all the other things the old ports can.

0.1% have used the current and awkward way to pay in a cheque.

This isn’t really a fair evaluation. Many people still have other bank accounts to bridge the gap between what they see as a full offering for them. I have paid in a cheque once or twice with Monzo, but I don’t bother anymore because Lloyd’s have a good solution for me to use instead. I was planning on using this until Monzo fully delivered. I can’t be the only one doing this.

I’m also pretty sure that there will be a number of business wanting this facility - they are certainly not the type of customers to keep multiple current accounts because the one they want to use is not good enough for them. Often, it costs money to even keep an account open with a provider. I would imagine that the type of business customers Monzo will attract are mostly small businesses who would probably offer the ability to take cheques.

I caveat the next comment by stating I do not know the team structure and work responsibilities, but… I really think this could be more important in getting more full-Monzo accounts than a number of the other things that they appear to be messing around with lately.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to ditch cheques, but we have to accept we’re not there yet. I’ve gone three years without writing one but I just can’t escape getting one every now and then. For those that need to pay in cheques, it’s important to remove as much friction as possible and Monzo are the company to best deliver that.

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Why? People did this for thirty years+ without issue.

I received a cheque refund from HMRC for marriage allowance refund of tax recently. It was backdated a few years so was a sizeable amount that i didn’t want to post. Unfortunately the HMRC refund for tax of marriage allowance changes to tax code must be by cheque with no option for Bacs transfer. I hold a joint first direct account that is used for all our household bills and for instances like this of paying in cheques (used HSBCs paying in machine which was quite handy).

I love my personal Monzo account and we opened a joint Monzo account but until the joint account features catch up e.g. overdrafts along with introducing other features such as paying in money (whether by cheque clearing, cash at post office etc.) We’re sticking with the first direct joint account. Not a bad thing at all, means we have a backup cards when things sometimes go wrong… E.g. the visa network issue last year… I was one of only a handful of people able to buy dinner at a restaurant using my Monzo MasterCard!

Disappointed cheque imaging is delayed… Yes. Can I live without it… Absolutely.

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It’s ok, I’ve got this modern system on my Halifax app where you scan the cheque and it adds the funds to the account.

Having lived though the 90s, and banked through the 90s, I’ve never once placed a cheque in the post.

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No worries then.

Me too, except I’ve sent and received thousands through the post both work and personal.

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we now use a joint account for all bills and shopping
but until I can pay in cash (£1000 every 6 months should be at least every 3 months)
and I still think the post office would work better than having to tell the shop assistant how to do the deposit every time.

and yes was looking forward to cheque imaging too.
totally agree with most of the posting above.
the two big things that would mean I could close my old account and just use monzo…

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I think I mentioned it before in another post/thread, but I myself recently (January 2019) had a refund from HMRC but it was paid by BACs direct to my Starling account because HMRC gave me the option of being paid either by cheque or BACs. Cheques are pointless for me these days, an absolute PITA if I’m honest, though I do still have a hardly used Lloyds account I can at least cheque image if I absolutely need to. The whole point about my digital banking life, is that I never want to step foot inside a shop front branch again if I can at all help it.

The bottom line is that Monzo is not all that dedicated to delivering what most would consider core banking services. We’ve seen it with cash, and now cheques.

The spurious use of statistics is quite irritating. I’ve had plenty of cheques in the last twelve months, but why on earth would I post them when I can just take a picture.

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This is a bit of a pain but is understandable. Cheque use is declining. I’m sure most people rarely get cheques now again. I’d far rather Monzo spent their time and effort on functions that is likely to be used by the majority of customers.

Very, very disappointed by this. I end up getting a handful of cheques every year and paying them in is such a pain that I have to keep another account open with a traditional bank just to handle them properly. I suspect I am not the only one, which is why the percentage of people post a cheque in is so low. I know that the usage of cheques is declining, but especially with the advent of business bank accounts surely this will become even more necessary for monzo to compete with traditional bank accounts. Just because they are digital only doesn’t mean I should be inconvenienced when doing normal banking activities.

I seriously hope they reconsider this.

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Working at a business that was strictly paid either in cash or by cheque 5-10 years ago. You probably won’t be surprised to read we haven’t had one for over a year. Everyone uses batched Bacs payments, bank transfer or just pays by card over the phone.

I’m not 100% sure businesses will be that bothered about cheques, then again after reading the Crowdcube thread I don’t think this community is representative of any of the Monzo userbase!

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And I agree, but dismissing something more than 5 months in advance of their proposed deadline is not the same as prioritising I feel!

This is good news, I look forward to seeing the new features that Monzo will be focusing their efforts on.

The kind of stuff that everyone will use and not just a tiny percentage :+1:

I’ve never written or received a cheque in my 30+ years existence. A few people have offered to pay me with them but I’ve asked for an alternative method instead :slight_smile:

The sooner that cheques are phased out the better in my opinion :sunglasses:

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I think you can only submit to join the service at set points in the year. Whilst it was 5 months out I’m not 100% sure that’s the submission date.

I’d love to have that option, sadly DVLA, HMRC, etc offer cheque or nothing so no choice in the matter! Haven’t written a cheque myself in many years.

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Really disappointed. Business accounts and other paid features is more important… Right direction :rage: fees fees fees.

I guess to chime in, I stopped sending cheques to Monzo when I discovered it took more than a week between sending and deposited. I take them to the coop bank and it takes about 24 hours to deposit which I then transfer to my Monzo account. I would use it if it was better.

Also, going “people aren’t using this feature therefore we won’t improve it” is a sure fire way to never get better.

I hope business accounts will start subsidising the rest of us.

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234,935,000 cheques were processed in the UK with a total value of £299,734,000,000 in 2018.

Yes they are declining but it still is an awful lot of cheques and money.

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