I’m a big fan of this idea. Bare minimum, I would want a shared pot that multiple people could add to and you could tie your card to for certain periods of time.
Alternatively, the mode you talk about would work well. For example, split everything spent on my card in the next 4 hours with these people automatically. Would be great for rounds at a pub.
If location can be involved and with the right permissions you could say, split with every one of my friends in this pub. So if someone leaves early they are automatically removed from the split.
Or better yet, automatically detect when my friends are in the pub and send out a request to them. It doesn’t have to tell you which friend unless they say yes to the request to try to preserve privacy. You could even do this sort of thing after the fact to settle later.
At a restaurant, you could type in the amount of the bill and then send a share notification. Each person could then define how much they will contribute and pay it on the one card.
Loads of power in this idea. Does require all your friends to have monzo though… perhaps you could do some of this via faster payments or even have a monzo app that people who don’t have a monzo bank account could have to deal with some of the notifications and permission things.
The way I’d like it to work is more like a global pot with privileges, so only certain people (the ones not drunk?) can make the payments? No need for people to p2p money, just elect how much they want to contribute to the global pot. Then during that time period all payments for those who are allowed come from the pot
New feature that is called mates-mode, when activated you have to choose people from your contacts list.
Until the feature is disabled (or a timer or time-range set) all purchases are automatically split between the contacts selected.
For every purchase you get a popup asking if you want to split the purchase. If you click yes your mates get a confirmation popup and that’s it . . . no pots and pre-deposits needed.
A review of the expenditures when the split-mode is turned off is welcome Total spend and how much each payed, in case someone decided to click the no box
Great idea in principle. Challenging but extremely helpful. Possibly a can of worms!
What Tricount and Splitwise do is very useful for splitting bills or expenses over a period among a group. Something similar in Monzo would be brilliant.
A few thoughts:
Putting cash in a kitty is good… But not that good. It means people can limit their spending, but I prefer not to usually because two problems arise. One is the inevitable running out of money and needing more. The other is people not wanting to hand over all their cash in advance to someone who then has the card to spend it, or who loses the card, or who stays put longer/ not as long as them.
I’d suggest going much more down the line of identifying transactions that are shared, synching across the group, and enabling a way to settle up easily. This would be really handy.
You have to handle the case of people who aren’t on Monzo, and why not use this to your advantage - Offer a free app just to log expenses and sync with a group. This app doesn’t mean having to open a full bank account, it’s really just an expense tracking & sync app with no actual money capabilities.
Then you get to expose more people to Monzo who might eventually choose to get an account. The payments to settle up could be made either through Monzo for those who have an account, and you identify the balance as paid/received, or you should also allow for payments to be made inbound from another bank and let the Monzo “Group Expenses app” user log it as paid / received.
You would need to be some kind of sharing ratios too, as well as acknowledgements. Or perhaps amounts would be easier. Such as “I spent £100 and want to split it evenly between 4 of us, ie £25 each.” and for people to respond, “No, I had left by that point.” Or “No, I will only pay £15 of that, because I didn’t have wine/dessert.” … and recalculate accordingly.
Final thought - I reckon you’ll see interesting consequences once your app is used as the medium to argue about restaurant bills. It’s worth thinking about that aspect.
Whilst all 8 of us are on Monzo, we’re not all on Plus or Premium, so don’t have this facility.
I’m only coming from the point that - if the ‘kitty’ facility was on Monzo - I feel more middle aged folk who go skiing, biking, sailing together would join Monzo because of it.
We now insist on a new member joining the ski group to have Monzo !! 2 new members this year who couldn’t believe what Monzo could offer over their existing bank card.
I see it as a huge benefit and sales feature. Perhaps those at Monzo don’t fee this as you say, little interest.
If the group organiser has it, you set up your pot and a virtual card from that pot, then give a virtual card to Ringo, Paul and George, then whenever any of them use the virtual card it comes from the pot.
Then at the end you can still split it back to everyone.
Total spend and how much each payed, in case someone decided to click the no box 