Lets be honest, that’s not quite the same thing, not to mention there are banks that have all that and actual banking features monzo doesn’t have.
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Honestly I don’t see how it’s any different. If I went back to a legacy account I’d lose my instant account notifications and budget/summary tools but your saying there are banks that offer these as well as all the legacy account features as well?
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One is an actual banking option. no instant notifications won’t stop you being able to use your money.
Lloyds, Bank of Scotland, and Halifax all offer similar features. Barclays offer similar features as well as push notifications but for a set of alert types.
It’s also worth noting that they are not legacy account features. They are current features supported by basically all banks, that you personally don’t use them doesn’t mean they are legacy.
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That’s my mistake they aren’t legacy account features. I worded that wrong.
I opened a Monzo account because I wanted notifications and budget tools and I don’t think any banks offer these, certainly not to the extent that Monzo does.
The cheque and cash handling with Monzo might not be ideal and hopefully that improves in time, it’s still early days for FinTech banks.
I joined Monzo last October because the budgeting appealed as I’ve done debts I’m trying to clear.
Plus I’ve enjoyed this forum and my perception that Monzo is an adaptive banking app that truly listens to customer opinion.
It’s fast becoming apparent that big highstreet banks are catching up fast in terms of their mobile app offering. The minute there’s some parity with budgeting and pots I’ll look into switching back to Barclays, NatWest etc etc.
Monzo have taken a sharp turn since the crowdfunding round to leverage revenue sources and appear to have forgotten about basic banking functionality in the context of a bank that is purely app-based.
Cash is going nowhere. Cheques are going nowhere. To create friction on the consumer side (charging for deposits, making it uncertain a cheque will arrive via the post) could ultimately be their downfall.
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Budget tools is where I think there is still a difference. Monzo do it differently and I think they budgeting tool could be what makes them different. Personally though… I can’t get it to work. Its never right, it doesn’t make sense, and it just seems useless to me. No idea what im doing wrong, but its not obvious in the app how im meant to get it working.
I do think its an area they can take advantage of though, as its the more complex area to do. the big banks will and have steamrolled Monzo on everything else and its basically taken them 6 months to do so. Thats what worries me with Monzo, they’re stagnating already.
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It’s the more the summary I find useful, it’s great that it shows me what money I have left after all my committed spending. This feature alone saves me having to have a separate account for bills like I previously use to.
The account notifications are detailed, everything going in or out of the account triggers notifications. Monzo has given me such much better insight and consequently better control over my money than any other bank up to now but If the big banks can replicate these features then I will start evaluating my bank choices again
You could say that monzos budgeting tools/summary kind of epitomises monzo at the moment… half-baked 
I tried to use summary and gave up after two months, without custom categories its just not ever going to be usable for me unfortuantely.
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Company posts cheque to customer with delivery confirmation -> delivery fails -> company reissues and reposts cheque.
Customer posts cheque to Monzo (with our without confirmation) -> delivery fails -> wait for Monzo to confirm it really hasn’t arrived (and is not in a pile awaiting sorting or fallen under a desk or misfiled etc) -> customer goes cap-in-hand to cheque issuer in the hope they will send another one.
Sucks doubly if the ‘cheque issuer’ is a customer you will literally need to visit in person to have write another cheque (and may be sceptical that you have lost it and are not trying to double bill them).
With cheque imaging, if it all goes arse-over-teakettle you still have the cheque to try again. With a physical branch you have a receipt. With post, you’re effectively sending cash in the mail.
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Or you pay for tracked / special delivery. So you’re effectively losing a chunk of the money you’re adding to your account like when paying cash into Monzo.
I’ve made the decision… after switching from Co-op to Monzo and closing down my highstreet bank account I’m going to open a Barclays account up, initially to pay in cash and cheques, but will look into a Blue Rewards current account as that offering is more appealing than Monzo Plus at the moment.
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Even with tracked special guaranteed white-glove postie-arrives-on-a-horse postage, mail still gets lost or misdelivered.
I’ve still for an FD account open, with salary paid into it (to avoid the £5 fee). Monzo still have a list of ‘basic banking functions’ that would need to be delivered before I could switch fully: adequate solutions to cheque deposits, adequate solution to cash deposits, and functional international fund transfers and reception that comply with KYC/AML requirements (“just use Transferwise” is no good here). Those all seem to have fallen into the “that requires work to solve, so we’ll leave it for some indeterminate future person to deal with” pile.
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Just open a savings account with First Direct, you avoid the fee without any effort at all.
I don’t use any of the features that make Monzo unique to a lot of people.
I literally use it as a bog standard banking app - Salary comes in, DD’s go out, Amex bill gets paid (and then any other places that don’t take Amex).
The only attraction for me is that the app is still the best (although, if it gets any slower, I’ll need to reconsider!).
The general ease of doing things, without the fear of being caught short due to not having your card reader on you, or the over zealous security controls to access or do anything with your account, are the reason I use Monzo.
The whole “customer service” thing is a little bit of a red herring, as I firmly believe most people very rarely need to contact CS (it feels like this forum has a much higher percentage of people who do contact CS).
That being said, the Monzo CS does seem to have slipped from the days where it was unbeatable (slow response times, fuzzy information etc).
If someone like Barclays had a better app (and their app is still not bad), I’d consider moving if Monzo didn’t improve their app.
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I’ve been fairly impressed.
Their account opening isn’t super smooth (something monzo does very well for the moment) but pretty decent. The app is really good. You’ll see the spending page show up in a month if not sooner, and if you need cheque imaging give them a phone from the in app call button (it automatically confirms it’s you) and ask them to add the feature to your app (even if you don’t use cheque imaging they have almost half a dozen ways of depositing a cheque). Pingit also has basically every digital payment option you could need.
It’s also really easy to open up savings accounts in app so you can have your account ‘pot’ separation with will account numbers. And I’ve noticed them also updating the app almost every month with a new option or feature.
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I don’t recall anything that I have sent getting lost in the post.
Isn’t this one of those things that used to happen occasionally but has been eradicated over time with technology and such?
Either that or I’m just lucky 
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Hmm I wonder what technology could be used to eradicate it? 
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Just to be clear I mean technology in sending things via post 
So this would be tracking, auto sorting, automatic address lookups (so you don’t make a mistake), computer generated postage labels and so on…
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It happens on occasion, I’ve seen letters turn up crumpled as they’ve got lost down the side of something only to show up months later.
Letters almost always get delivered, but they do occasionally get temporarily lost.
Exactly its the “temporarily lost” ones that are probably the worse especially it is someone’s cheque from work or a high value one
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4 a year when i get my Solar payments through. cheque imaging would be very much appreciated