My point exactly - if cheques can’t be banked conveniently then that is surely a drawback for potential business customers of Monzo.
I very much doubt it, the cost would never make it worth it. It would cost them £100k a year to join minimum, then any processing fees.
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Yes it is completely understandable that avoiding the cost and effort to join a scheme that supports a declining form of payment may ne something to avoid, I still wonder what the ‘sell’ to the business account market will be in this respect as the other old fashioned banks are offering imaging whilst new kids on the block offer a snail mail based solution - just doesn’t feel very challengery to me…
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Reluctant to cash deposit, now an indefinite pause (aka cancellation) to cheque imaging. I think Monzo is proving to fail their #NoBarriersToBanking agenda, both to the unbanked and potential SME Business Banking customers, while their “cool features” are quickly being caught up by other banks. Pay a contact is basically Paym feature, Flux e-receipts despite just been recently introduced can soon be implemented everywhere with Open Banking. If Google Pay can integrate a budget management tool into its app (which at the moment is just seeing your contactless payments in-app), I reckon Monzo will quickly become nothing cool than just a fun looking spending card.
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Plus it’s the simple way of taking a conditional deposit - I’ve had this for courses before. If the person turns up they get their cheque back, if they don’t the cheque is banked. Very straightforward and no need to have the hassle of sending refunds, etc.
I also have a charity I’m a trustee for - when we have lots of people claiming expenses that need reimbursed it would be far simpler for me to quickly write some cheques (as I just need the recipient’s name and amount). At present I’ve gone to the extra hassle of seeking their bank details (which I have to redact before upload to online accounting for GDPR purposes) and then manually entering their details to send payment - a cheque would be quicker for me but I’m trying to help them out. If the numbers increased significantly though the time cost would be too high and I might revert to my predecessor’s method of writing cheques!
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Would’ve been a nice feature but I’m not that fussed about this. It’s always good to have a back up current account (even if you’re “full Monzo”) just open one that has this feature for now…
Who knew cheques would still cause such an issue? I cannot wait until they no longer exist.
Incredibly disappointing news. I’ve tried to go #FullMonzo since I was one of first few to get the current account during its trial phase.
I’ve always kept my Natwest account around for issues like this, and I’m very glad I have after this bad news. #FullMonzo is pretty much not going to happen for me, nor my circle of other Monzo customers I know, as they have also kept their old “legacy” accounts open.
I feel like Monzo are dropping the ball more recently with their core demographic, trying to chase the proverbial “next big cash cow” of customers, i.e. business banking.
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I don’t think it’s just business banking.
If you look at the 2019 plans, every single development and integration will be a revenue stream for Monzo… Savings, ISAs, energy switching, mortgages, Monzo Plus.
With that in mind, it no surprise they’re no longer focusing on functionality that’s not going to make them money.
It does seem like since the last crowdfunding round they’ve lost their friendly veneer a little and shown that their current focus is becoming profitable, and only that.
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This 
Or dare i say it something that may not be profitable but something the higher average salaried, heavily london based monzo staff would find useful so actually get behind themselves (amex balance in app)
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Several banks offer this now - what’s the Monzo USP that’s keeping you?
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I understand the decision on one hand - but on the other this means that most people will keep open another bank account solely for the ease of dealing with cheques, which means that there is always the risk of customers moving back.
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And to be honest, I think that is a perfectly wise and sensible thing to do if you can have two functioning accounts with different banks. The TSB IT debacle proved that I think. I wouldn’t now ever just limit myself to one banking provider.
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There’s also the flip side of this argument, they have to make a profit at some point.
If they don’t start trying to generate revenue, new features will grind to a halt…because there won’t be Monzo anymore.
There’s a certain level of commercialisation that Monzo will have to undertake, they can’t stick forever being your mates with the good app. Yeah, they’ll lose customers this way that are sensitive to being nickel and dimed, but it’s better then losing everyone when you have to close the doors.
I’d also agree there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about it, but where you draw the line is entirely personal.
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I’m moving back, monzo only has one feature left that other banks don’t fully implement and thats budgeting settings… and they don’t work well at all. So the whole set a budget thing has been useless for me since they changed it, and I don’t expect any work to improve it this year. So monzo has basically nothing to offer me that other banks don’t already offer.
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Because there’s nothing else I currently need from my bank so I’m not interested in moving away. I loved to Monzo after using the prepaid card and it was so much better than my current legacy bank at that time - and still is
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Hi folks, I just wanted to follow up on our post from Friday. Thanks for all your questions and comments so far - I’d like to address some of your common concerns.
Firstly, I want to assure you that we don’t make decisions like this lightly and without lots of internal discussion. From a personal perspective (as the person who looked into the Image Clearing System initially), I’m deeply disappointed that we won’t have the chance to bring it to you this year. But I also believe it’s the right decision for now.
We’d love to build in-app cheque imaging, and think it’d be a great customer experience. But when it comes to weighing up the potential impact against other similar projects, there’s just not a strong enough case right now.
And it’s not simply a case of cheque imaging vs. Business Banking. We’re working on a number of projects that we’ve had to take into consideration. For example, my team is currently working on SEPA payments - we just don’t have any shiny announcements we can link to yet!
I’d like to clear up another part of the blog post:
Thinking about the first question, for example, less than 0.1% of our customers have ever deposited a cheque! So there’s a good chance that, if we spend our time and effort on something else, we could build something that helps more of you.
Of course, this number is how many people deposit cheques using the current process . You’re right - if we built cheque imaging we’d expect that number to be higher. And features that seem to be low usage can be really impactful to the people who use them (like cash deposits or our gambling block).
But this isn’t the only factor when it comes to decision-making. We also think about whether it lets you do something new (there is at least a process for depositing cheques, unlike cash before our PayPoint setup), and whether there’s anything else we could do elsewhere to help more people.
And building cheque imaging wouldn’t be as straightforward as it might seem. When you directly connect with any payment scheme from scratch, it isn’t just “building the thing”. It’s the cost (both time/effort and actual cash) on exploratory work (for example, in this case, Optical Character Recognition would be a completely new thing for us), physical infrastructure changes, testing schedules etc.
Finally: we’re not taking cheque imaging off the table completely. We just didn’t want to push it back a further X months and again realise that we’re actually not going to be able to work on it. With hindsight (and a bit more forward planning) we perhaps should have spent a bit more time scoping out what was actually required of us before committing to any timelines publicly.
At the moment, we still rely on a sponsor bank for access to a few systems, (cheques included). A long-term goal is to remove these dependencies entirely, at which point we will be required to join the Image Clearing System directly - until then, customers still have the ability to deposit cheques into their Monzo account, it will just have to be done via post (or dropping them off to our London office).
I hope that helps answer some of your questions!
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Thanks for the response James,
Do you see monzo allowing customers to drop off high value cheques at the new Cardiff office once all settled in?
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I actually agree with you, given your presumable small technology team prioritising existing and more required features is what monzo should be doing to try and keep pace with the bigger banks which bigger budgets.
I think monzo either will stay a somewhat niche bank or eventually offer full services but both of those are perfectly acceptable options so long as it’s clear which monzo ends up being.
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Thanks for the clarification James, it shows that the decisions aren’t just a knee jerk and are thought about.
Do you know if the process will be adapted at all (if that is even possible) or say more assurance of the handling of cheques via the postal method currently? That could be a good way to stave off the negative feeling of the imaging development being shelved.
thanks James - I was wondering if the inability to bank cheques in a convenient fashion could actually prove to be a turn off for the business account market that Monzo aspires to attract? Any views on this, appreciate the plans may not be fully matured yet or possible to share. Also - is there no model available for the imaging service to be piggy-backed onto the bank that clears cheques for Monzo (presumably they are live for imaging) or does the scheme/technology not support such a model?
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