Version 5.29.0 has a bunch of Joint Account edits, which is nice, but they all seem to be related to the signup flow. I get the feeling that the thing staff have been (variously) alluding to might be allowing more people to sign up again, and while thatās good it isnāt Joint Account Parity (unless there have been strings in other recent updates that anyone has noticed?)
Parity - in theory - wouldnāt need new strings 
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Looks like business overdrafts are on their way
<boolean name="overdraft_allow_business_accounts" value="false" />
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I think it would unless itās āunbounded parityā - one person having Plusium means that both get Virtual Cards and Custom Categories. It would be nice if any staff member would comment on this, ever 
. I can understand the separate issue of not allowing people to sign up to joint being perhaps some sensitive (regulatory?) issue, but Joint Account Parity isnāt. The total lack of specific comment on that part just leads me to think it will languish in the dirt for another bloody 5 years.
My take is that theyāve had some pretty big mess ups on joint accounts to fix, just to let folk sign up again.
My biggest beef is that they appeared to be blaming customers for that given their euphemistic choice of words, rather than owning it and explaining it. (Cashback is a good example of community engagement working for both sides; this is exactly the opposite). Itās just not right that folk are left thinking that theyāve done something wrong or that thereās something bad hidden in their, or their partnerās, credit histories.
I say all of that because I think the focus has been on quietly fixing the fundamentals that they broke. Once thatās been done, Iām reasonably sure that weāll start seeing more features.
Also, remember that the US has custom categories for joint accounts, and are seemingly taking an approach that makes joint accounts first class citizens, so all of that is in there somewhere.
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I agree that itās been bad on the signups front, but itās a little annoying that āthe joint account issueā is a bit obfuscated at this point. A staff member was recently making positive waves about the whole ājoint accout situationā, but upon reading that teardown I get the solid impression that we might just end up with people able to sign up for them en mass again, but no custom categories, and no virtual cards. Sure, it is bad that some people have not been able to sign up for a little while, but Joint Account Parity has been an issue for much, much longer. We can see from the teardown that the signup flow is getting fixed (did it need fixed? didnāt feel like that was really the issue), but is anything being done on custom categories or virtual cards? I see no indications whatsoever. It would be very frustrating if internally the conversation at Monzo went something like āoh we fixed the JA issue now, on to other thingsā. Thatās not the JA issue! Damn parity is!
I hear you and Iām not disagreeing.
The point Iām trying to land is that you might (unfortunately) need to be a bit patient. Extra features will only make sense if a) they can increase customer numbers and b) they can monetise it.
So I expect phase one to be fix the problem, phase two open up sign ups, phase three introduce overdrafts (and profit), phase four introduce paid accounts (and profit).
That said, I have a feeling that thereās gonna be a shake up in paid accounts. Iām thinking features like custom categories will become free, which means that aligning it to the new joint account offer would make a lot of sense.
But Iām probably wrong. Sadness.
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Because of that poll the other week, I guess?
I just want Joint Account Parity so much. It feels like I am using Monzo through oven mitts at the moment. Virtual cards enable using a spending pot for ad-hoc spending, bringing much sharper edges to things (my old discretionary/mandatory line). And custom categories, I mean, it actually boggles my mind that we still donāt have them. Do you remember how much people screamed for them on the personal account? It was just about the most requested feature ever.
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I still suspect the fundamental underlying structure of users/accounts is to blame. Not just for Monzo, but for Starling too.
The user at the top of the tree. Whereas traditional bank accounts have the account at the top of the tree. Allow me to demonstrate using the medium of words:
Old-school bank:
- Personal account ā user
- Joint account ā user#1 and user#2
Monzo/Starling bank:
- User ā Personal account
- User ā Joint account
- User#2 ā Personal account #2
- User#2 ā Joint account
The traditional way has 2 account types to consider and one of the account types has access by 2 parties
The Fintech way has 2 users to consider. One of them with access to 2 account types (Personal & Joint) and one of them also with access to 2 account types (Personal & the same Joint)
Totally different architectures.
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I think itās worse than that.
I think itās
Personal account == user
> Joint account
> Flex
> Pots
> Connected accounts.
Thatās why Monzo uses the avatar associated with your āpersonal detailsā as the logo for your personal account. It just canāt separate them.
Donāt think thereās anything necessarily bad with having the individual at the top level of the hierarchy, but it needs to work differently, something like:
> User (Tom Bloom)
>> Monzo personal account
>>> Pot 1
>>> Pot 2
>> Monzo joint account
>> Tesco connected account
Etc
Itās not worse, but not any better.
The Joint account structure issue was evident before Flex or Connected accounts. So I donāt believe Flex/Connected accounts have worsened the situation. Pots may have introduced a sub-issue, but if the top-issue is sorted, so should pots be.
The problem is exaclty as you demonstrate in your āsomething like:ā statement - the User cannot be at the top level. An account has to be at the top level:
'> Monzo personal account
'>> User
'>>> Pot 1
'>>> Pot 2
'>>> Connected accounts
'> Monzo joint account
'>> User
'>> User#2
'>>> Pot 1
'>>> Pot 2
'>>> Connected accounts
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Ok, my turn:
I recon that their microservices architecture is oriented completely towards single-ownership of all entities. You log in as you, and you can go to the TransactionsMicroservice and get your transactions which can then be decorated by the CustomCategoriesMicroservice, and so on. The datastore in each microservice can have a user id against every record, such that the only thing that itās possible to return from that microservice is your own data. I wouldnāt be surprised, because this is banking and highly regulated, if there werenāt some underlying infrastructure that locks each service to just the subset of data for that user - that you couldnāt accidentally return the data of another user even if you tried.
And then along comes Joint Accounts and spoils the sauce. This one user can see all their own stuff but also the stuff this other user owns. So you add a hack for the TransactionsMicroservice and AccountsMicroservice that lets two users own one account, but itās kind of ugly and those guys on the forum have shut up now so you consider joint accounts done and get on with building the Monzo Marketplace or whatever. And then later some other team writes the CustomCategoriesMicroservice which seems awfully easy to do for a single user and, umm, oh dear itās really not so easy when two users can view each one, potentially. Especially when itās only the subset of categories that are assigned to transactions in the joint account; we canāt have that HokeAndCookers tag being leaked to your partner by mistake! But then the CustomCategoriesMicroservice is going to have to depend on the TransactionsMicroservice from an authentication perspective. And also probably the AccountsMicroservice, again from an authentication perspective. Butā¦ the TransactionsMicroservice was depending on the CustomCategoriesMicroservice from a datapath perspective - it wanted to decorate the transactions with the custom category names.
So, yeah, I recon itās the cardinality change in the ownership layer thatās making it a pain in the ass.
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Pretty interested in this new feature flag :
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Do you reckon itās for abroad types, or just anywhere the system believes youāve been out of your normal area ie your trip to Manchester cost you Ā£470 on Canal Street? 
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Abroad. When I returned I realised the existing holiday trip summary had been truly butchered back to nothing.
So hope they bring it back & enable me to flag all transactions on that trip a specific category or hashtag etc
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Same here i was wondering where it had disappeared to. Had to manually classify all transactions, hopefully they bring it back
App version 5.38.0 - Combined Accounts & Pots on Statements, Investments & Pensions - oh my!
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Few things from the latest teardown I want to speculate on ā¦ cause why the hell not?!
delightful_payments_enabled - A new look for the payments page that you get to when clicking on a transaction? 
paid_instant_access_early_access_launched - A new instant access savings pot, or similar, but for paid people?
overview_show_external_account_full_account_items - Show transactions from external accounts? Or a new homepage block?
pot_instant_access_for_paid_early_opted_in - unsure on this one - but maybe an option to get paid early into a pot, or maybe a US thing?
Thanks as always to @davidwalton for the teardown! 
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Paid early, automatically?
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