I recently tried to use my Monzo account to set up a direct debit for my managed pension. Unfortunately the provider said that Monzo was an unrecognised bank account. The reason given is:
“Monzo are not tied in with ID3 who do our validation piece for bank accounts. ID3 and Monzo are at the discussion table but it’s not moving that quickly. We are due to meet them again shortly to push the issue but ultimately, if the client wants to open an account and have their Monzo account linked then we are currently not the platform for them, which is a shame.”
I understand that there are many piece of the financial jigsaw puzzle but is this one you will sort out soon? I like Monzo and try to use it as my main bank account but this kind of thing still puts you behind all the traditional banks (despite their many faults!)
As per BACS’ rules if they are part of the Direct Debit scheme it’s mandatory for them to accept all bank accounts, so I suggest you get in touch with BACS who are usually pretty good at sorting out this kind of nonsense.
then we are currently not the platform for them, which is a shame
Voting with your wallet and switching to a provider that actually knows what they’re doing is always an option.
To be honest, its not really my problem. Apparently they are in discussions with you. I have other bank accounts so I will leave it to you to sort out - if you choose to.
@anon23935806 doesn’t work for Monzo, like most on the community forum, including myself.
It isn’t actually Monzo’s problem either though - it’s the garbage payment processor your pension provider is using.
So it’s entirely your pension providers problem really, because they can’t process payments for 1m+ current accounts. But it doesn’t seem like they care too much to actually put on pressure anyway, and as long as you don’t care, your pension provider will continue to not care too.
Please email an explanation and as much evidence as possible to acceptance@monzo.com.
Unfortunately, a few services like to attach various non-standard “verification” requirements to their Direct Debits and then blame us for not supporting them, even going against Bacs rules.
As the other replies suggest, I believe this is a bit of nonsense to cover for someone making up their own payments rules. BACS administer the direct debit scheme and (as far as I know as a non-finance professional) other organisations are NOT supposed to be free to add or take away their own bits and pieces which is what appears to be going on here.
From my perspective, the question I’d have to ask is where is the self-interest in doing this sort of thing and then requiring your customers to turn away their own potential customers as a result? It makes no sense to me at all.
Was it purely a direct debit setup or were they trying to do something else using the Monzo account too? (Such as what, I don’t know but I thought I ought to ask.)
I understand the concept of vote with your wallet but think this is a terrible perspective to provide on a forum like this.
If there’s one person who’s problem this isn’t, it’s a Monzo user. I think as Monzo continues to grow we’re going to see more issues like this not less. It seems like for many businesses keeping BACS information up to date is really difficult, it shouldn’t be but it is.
If moving to a “legacy” bank would have been easier then that’s something Monzo need to look into.
By being proactive and reaching out to services that don’t support them, Monzo can actually develop a USP here. I bet it’s a tonne of work going to these outdated companies and working with them but it might be worth it. There are already a tonnes of new banks and there will be even more soon they’re all going to have these teething problems. Monzo could be the bank you move to and it just works.
Notice that in the official Monzo response they did not advise the customer to change the way they lived their life to fit around Monzo. That’s the kind of response you’d get from a current high street bank!
