Monzo in 2021: Wish List

Monzo Chat
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So over here we’re discussing what we think will happen for Monzo (and fintech) in 2021. This topic is different: what we want to happen!

I’m going to keep it top-level and punchy. Here are my top-five wishes!

:one: Introduce a lower paid-tier. Revolut is showing the way with this. £2/month for some (all?) of the software features of Plus. No new card.

:two: Bring back real innovation! Monzo seemed stagnant last year (which you can forgive, because P-word) but I’d like to see them leading the pack again. The paid accounts were worthy but uninspiring - and a bit ‘me too’. Genuine innovation - thinking of Monzo as a platform rather than a bank account - please!

:three: Partner with complementary businesses to bring more into the app. Folk like Nutmeg or Vanguard for managed investments; Freetrade or T212 for self-managed trading/investment; PensionBee for pensions; Habito for mortgages… Native and deep integrations, please, leading toward me being able to see my entire financial life (and net worth) in Monzo.

:four: Fix budgeting and :five: use our data to give us insight - different sides of the same coin. Do we budget - look forward - using Budgets, using Left to Spend or via bills pots? How do they all work together? And how do we make the most of the data in Monzo - look back - to see where we’re spending and how we can save money? What’s my net worth? These two are currently muddled in the app and desperately need fixing. Maybe a basic approach for the free account and some really in-depth features if you’re paying?

So those are my asks - but what’s on your 2021 Monzo wish list?

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Fix Monzo.me so Apple Pay works again.

Link virtual cards to a pot.

Auto number regeneration virtual card.

Budgeting/summary/categories works with external cards (such as Amex)

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I’d like them to fix the Merchant data correction process, and make an improvement in that area.

Other than that, I’m pretty happy with Monzo atm tbf.

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A few minor UX fixes that would make a big difference to me:

:one: You can click back from a transaction in the search view and go back to the same scroll position in the list, like in the main home feed. This really bugs me right now and would be my number one fix!

:two: You seeing the withdrawal from the committed spending pot merged with the transaction as a blob

:three: You can enter a new merchant and it goes back to the transaction rather than back to the name selection, for consistency with entering a Twitter icon

:four: You can submit an Instagram handle instead of a Twitter name

:five: You see the same merging of round ups and withdrawals from the committed spending pots with the transactions in the web view

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A bit like we see for round-ups, so there’s one entry that covers both the movement into the pot and the payment out? That’d be neat, although I wonder how that’d look in practice? :thinking:

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Pot to Pot (and then IFTTT) would have the biggest real world difference for me I think.

More insights would be good too. The end of month/period summary is dreadful.

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Agreed. A lower tier which only includes software enhancements would be appealing to me.
I think £2.50 a month is the maximum price that I’d consider.

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My wish list is all about making me more comfortable moving more of my banking from my high street bank to Monzo.

  1. Make web access available to personal account holders

  2. Improve telephone support (don’t cut off after 10-15 minutes wait).

  3. Support Post Office counter services

  4. Introduce cheque imaging

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This is very unexciting, but I 100% agree that this is what Monzo really need to focus on

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Both apps actually having the same features would be a start :rofl:

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I think you might get no1 but not the other 3.

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I just wish I could dismiss that fake account to the left of my feed on my screen.

Simples! :man_shrugging:

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• £1.50 paid level (I can’t say the word tier anymore :joy:)
• Fix international payments in
• Fix merchant data for the love of god
• Allow me to dismiss the fake account
• Cheque imaging
• Post Office counter service

But the BIG thing would be your number 2: real innovation. That is the thing that would make me start recommending Monzo again. I haven’t been able to do that for the past couple of years.

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This would be ideal, especially for bills pots.

My feed looks hideous with all the pots movements related to bills pots. I wish they could fix that

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A few suggestions for a lower paid tier at around £2 or less here, but what features would you be willing to lose to justify the £3 decrease without essentially cannibalising the plus tier (sorry @urban) completely to the point of irrelevance.

Maybe I’m missing something, but products like Revolut Plus and N26 Smart are essentially those banks equivalence of what Monzo plus offers, just at a lower price tag.

To add my own wish list now in order of priority:

  1. More coherent budgeting tools, more Simple.
  2. After budgeting has been fixed, allow the left to spend balance be shown in place of the actual balance.
  3. Cure budgeting’s blindness to upcoming payments beyond the current budgeting period.
  4. A better UX for pots.
  5. Apple Pay support for Monzo.me (iMessage applet for this whilst you’re at it Monzo please).
  6. Virtual cards assigned to pots (With Apple Pay support please).
  7. A self destructing virtual card (without limits).
  8. More connected accounts beyond current accounts and credit cards (IE savings, investments, mortgage)
  9. Greater functionality and control over connected accounts, without leaving the Monzo app.
  10. Streamline the transaction feed interface. It looks cluttered, contrasty, and messy. Use consistent shapes please.
  11. Dark mode. But comply with the system UI settings please.

Bonus wish: When Simple lose their trade mark on Safe-to-Spend, rename left to spend with this. It’s a better descriptor.

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Off the top of my head, a £2 tier consisting of something like the following:

  • No interest
  • Standard hot coral card
  • No free cash deposits
  • Standard overseas ATM allowances
  • Max of two virtual cards
  • Connected accounts (inc near native functionality when developed)
  • Custom categories
  • Google docs integration
  • Credit tracker
  • Roundups
  • Web interface

Additions to Plus and Premium:

  • Current limits to virtual cards
  • Disposable virtual cards
  • Virtual cards connected to pots
  • Add virtual cards to Google/Apple Pay
  • Credit card pots (spend on credit card and move from Monzo or connected current account to credit card pot; pot set as bills port for card)

Once virtual cards / pot are a thing, I’d also like to see physical cards as a paid-for option, decreasing in cost per tier (also accessible to non-paying customers). Also a feature where you can digitally send a virtual card to someone to use on your behalf via the Pays would be fab.

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Id pay £2 a month for this :wave:

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I’d be ok with slightly higher than £2 month. £2.50 or lower is probably when I’d start to get interested.

Happy to lose Interest on balance and regular pots, holographic card, offers, free cash deposit, extra free-free withdrawals abroad, free-free allowances.

I would say though that I wouldn’t immediately jump at a lower price option. Monzo would first have to significantly improve the aggregation aspect to bring it closer to what dedicated account aggregators provide.

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Great thread! My wish list would be:

:one: Complete budget revamp - for all the reasons already said. At best Monzo is “spend tracking” and not true budgeting

:two: Genuine data insights. Said a lot about this with the Plus data export link in the past. But basically make Year In Monzo a permanent, monthly feature. The number one thing Aggregator Apps excel at is data insights. I’d rather this be a regular feature I can look in any day of the year and see live, meaningful actionable data.

:three: A Monzo Credit Card - would rather all my spending be in the same “platform”, if 1 and 2 were solved.

:four: Integration with a S+S ISA / other investment platform. But true and proper integration, not just “a product you can sign up to in Monzo”.

:five: Joint :clap: Account :clap: Parity

Oh and a final :six: a native version of IFTTT. With IFTTT rolling out Pro, and effectively limiting their free platform, a lot of former integrations are dead, and you can only have three live.

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You’ve spoken a lot about Simple. I haven’t used it (not American, obvs), but it strikes me that there are two approaches to the budgeting problems: physical separation (the envelope method) or virtual separation (the safe to spend option).

Now, the problem (as I see it) with Monzo is that they have done both, but haven’t really cracked it with either. What do I mean?

Well, Summary and Left to Spend is on the way to being the safe to spend option. But because it was never finished, and never predicted incoming money, and the algorithms were a bit murky (does it just average your daily spend and assume that you’ll carry on like that?) it never really worked properly.

So along came bills pots. That’s a completely different approach, working on the envelope method of physical separation. But again it doesn’t do the whole job because it doesn’t take into account spending from cards and salary sorter isn’t automated… It’s just not sophisticated enough.

From a blank canvas, my preference would be to split discretionary spending from bills/committed spend in the app (here’s some of my mock-ups on the Dozens community about how it might work for their app, and here are some rubbish old thoughts on here). But I think, given where we are on Monzo, they should just call on-in on the envelope method. I think this would mean:

  • Card payments from pots
  • Automation of salary sorter and better tools for squirrelling money away
  • Your main balance being the ‘safe to spend’ figure (because everything else is in pots)

I’m not quite sure what that would mean for budgets. But wouldn’t it be nice if you could set them, then when your salary hit your account your budgets would get sorted into pots, leaving your main account as spending money, then pots as the source for whatever you’re budgeting for?

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