Are all types of subscription type card payments done on a āContinuous Payment Authorityā basis or are some indistinguishable from normal card transactions?
I assume Monzo can tell that I have a CPA with certain vendors then, so they know of itās existence, just not when itās coming out? Or is that not the case?
I guess the only way they could make this work is the move money out of the pot after the transaction has come in - which assumes youād have a balance in your main account greater than whatās being charged?
For things like āPay the coffee shop from my coffee potā Iād be fine with a āmove money afterā approach, if thatās a way to make it work.
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tbutz
(š³ļøāš Producer of "low value commentary")
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As I understand it (and please correct me if Iām wrong anyone!), a CPA is simply that you have given an instruction that the company can debit your card as and when it needs to. For the bank, there is no significant difference in the card payment request they receive, so a bank could only handle this in the way Monzo do (i.e. let you mark it as recurring in the app, and Monzo take it as read that itās CPA), or try to determine it algorithmically (i.e. same payment monthly).
I would imagine Monzo will probably have to process such payments retrospectively as you suggested, because they canāt put extra āooh, what pot should this come from, letās check the balance and move that over, oh no, not enough, okay letās just use the main balance insteadā code in the middle of the existing process without negatively impacting something thatās already very time-sensitive. It would have to happen after the fact and then Monzo would do some clever stuff in the background so it looks just like all the other DD/SO-from-pot transactions.
Iāve been using ifttt for a while for various purchases. Just have to make sure the funds are available in the main balance first. My favourite one is foreign currency atm withdrawals triggering a corresponding withdrawal from my holiday pot.
It might be difficult to replicate this kind of functionality but it would be a standout feature for sure (already is for me using ifttt)
I didnāt realise IFTTT could use a transaction as a trigger. For some reason I thought it couldnāt. I will have to look at it again, as this opens up some interesting possibilities.
Been quite some time since I set up and last touched my IFTTT
I did almost find myself entering details for the developer platform at the time, but then got cold feet. Is there any cost in money, effort or hurdles to clear in setting it up for personal use with Monzo?
Not really, because itās not distinguishable from any other card payments that might happen frequently. Letās say Person A had a CPA to top-up a phone on the 1st of the month, and Person B does the same thing, but does it manually each time. To us, that information is exactly the same. So, you could tell us that this is a recurring monthly payment for the purposes of your Summary, but what if you then decide to top-up again in the middle of the month on one occasion? We canāt learn from the date, or the amount, because this might change.
Itās not impossible, but it has a ton more variables than DDās or SOās.
For all intents and purposes, no we do not. (At least, this is my understanding of the situation - someone with deeper payments knowledge may be aware of additional nuance)
If you mark one as being recurring in the app, then we will account for it in Summary, but you could theoretically do that for any card purchase, whether itās a CPA or not.
For some merchants, like Netflix, Google, Spotify, then we (as in, people) know that it is a CPA, and so we could theoretically account for that in an algorithm but itās still a likelihood rather than something set in stone, whereas a Standing Order either exists on a repeated scale of x or it doesnāt, and a Direct Debit also has inbuilt guarantees and usually a timeframe the merchant adheres to.
As far as how you could prevent it? You couldnāt, not once youāve handed over the card details. Theoretically Netflix could suddenly decide to charge every card on their system Ā£100 tomorrow if they wanted to.
There are some nuances to this, such as the payment type on our end having data that shows the card being āCard on Fileā which means that it was stored on a system prior to that payment, but CPAās arenāt the only instance where that can be the case.
Interesting. Just figured from what Iāve read about a CPA that somehow the bank āknowā itās authorised.
Given that, according to the FCA, I can go to the bank to stop payments being made, there would be some mechanism to flag what is a CPA and what is not.
If I were to ask Monzo then to stop a CPA, would that affect all payments to that Vendor? (Or at least ones made without the physical card?)
Yup, weād have to block the merchant, and thatād be binary - either the merchant is blocked as a whole or it isnāt. And thatād be for both IRL and digital payments.
Maybe this should have its own topic but to get around reoccurring card payments not working with Bills Pots, Iāve changed my payment methods for Netflix and Spotify to PayPal. PayPal will then be paid via direct debit from my monzo account, which can be assigned to a Bills Pot.
Now hereās the question, my subscriptions for Netflix and Spotify start on different days of the month so does this mean that there will be two separate direct debits coming from PayPal, or will it be the one direct debit that appears twice a month?
They both amount to the same thing but Iād prefer it if it was two separate direct debits just for my own tracking purposes.
Iāll keep you posted, my Spotify renews every month the 23rd and Netflix on the 5th.
It would be ideal if the PayPal direct debits are totally separate.
Interesting, the pre-auth for my Spotify-PayPal link up came through and kept the merchant data, my only concern was that once Netflix was also added to PayPal it would muddy the data so to speak.
