It is really, really dispiriting that Monzo is thinking this way
My friends/family have made their own choices for how they want to bank. I want to send them money while respecting their choices, not recruit them. Between this and the spamming of the £10 offer highlighted in another thread, it’s really disappointing to see Monzo putting expansion before user experience.
Also, a few people have been saying both buttons should have equal weighting: I think the opposite. If this is for sending money to people who don’t have Monzo, that option should be highlighted. I’m fine with Monzo advertising on the page, but it should be crystal clear that this is not a sign-up request of any sort.
I was not particularly annoyed or concerned personally over on the thread about referral offers, but tried to understand why others were
This statement does read a bit like the lesson has not been fully learnt
At the very least the two options should be given totally equal standing, but (again personal view) the option for another bank should be first and larger
As someone said above, the confirmation page could always plug the benefits to the flow that would have come from being a member
If I was to send the link to a friend in it’s current form I think they’d quite rightly tell me politely that they’ll just give me their bank details and leave it up to me to send money. Using the link as a marketing tool is fine, but it’s current form appears pushy and, in my opinion, off-putting.
There have been multiple users voice this opinion now. It might not be the consensus amongst the whole Monzo userbase as I can’t speak for everyone, but to dismiss the feedback quite so quickly doesn’t bode well!
To contribute to converstation, I honestly don’t see any issues with the way the page is set up; it doesn’t seem like a marketing stunt to me.
In my opinion, considering this is a free service, I think it’s fair for Monzo to include a few pieces of encouragement for the recipient to sign up. If the recipient is fixed on not signing up to Monzo for whatever reason, it’s quick and easy to hit the button to send it to their existing bank account.
It’d be a different story if there were heaps of pop-ups or something, but having buttons displayed in a certain order alongside a sign-up bonus doesn’t seem too intrusive. That’s just my opinon, though!
I don’t have access to this yet to test but if I sent someone a pay link, my concern would be that they’re like “what on earth is Monzo?”. There’s no mention of a bank or banking on the initial screenshots.
Yeah. Considering it’s essentially an ad it’s not doing a great job of saying what Monzo is. There ain’t even any branding. I’m assuming this is because it’s in Labs. But still.
This is really, really putting me off Monzo (that and the flashing neon sign saying "give us access to your contacts or lots of features won’t work)
I signed up to Monzo because it looked like an awesome bank, not because I wanted to be part of a community (no offence). Monzo is a bank not a social media platform and I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the pressure to spam everyone you know.
Yes, I enjoy the forums. There is a lot of interesting chat and interesting people. As there are on some other internet forums. I see this forum as a separate entity to Monzo the bank, and I would be pretty pissed off if for example Monzo started requiring forum membership to be able to use the account, although it does seem things might be heading that way…
Those stats are also obviously very dodgy So I’ve read 90k posts, but only commented 250 times This may have become one of my preferred forums but I’m not that obsessed
Just another comment to say I think the current layout looks pretty spammy.
I personally don’t understand the need for any of these kind of services, we don’t live in the US with its backward banking system - it’s simple for me to ask for my friends bank details and pay via Faster Payments.
And I’m still vaguely uncomfortable about the necessity of enabling access to my contacts.
With Monzo focussing on growth, these situations are going to become increasingly more common.
IMO, the people I know would be far more likely to sign up to Monzo if there was no doubt about the service and how it worked.
To be able to simply go “Wow, that worked really well and it was so easy”.
The current implantation will definitely cause confusion for some people about whether they NEED to sign up for a Monzo account, which isn’t as slick as it simply working quietly with no fuss.
It’s been mentioned before but I can’t find the original coment. The term ‘by text or email’ is a bit too specific. ‘pay someone via a link’ would be more relevant?
+1 for the dislike of the overall pushiness now coming across.
Its like something out of wolf of wallstreet, monzo are saying massive thanks guys for helping us grow organically but we need more from you, push push push this monzo bluechip stock!
Really? A tad over dramatic.
If you don’t want to use it then don’t. If you don’t want to send referrals then don’t. I don’t find it pushy, in this case it’s a very useful feature with the option for the recipient to open an account shown as an option. They don’t have to open an account to get the money
Thats not the case, i like referrals and think theyre a great way to make some features more useful on monzo i cant disagree with that.
Its the way that ive been asked to give them in the 4/5 different means/ways in the last week that i dont like.
Without taking this thread off topic ill just make the point i agree with a few others here and think the actual feature/transfer here should be front and centre and then the “join monzo and it would be easier to do this link” should come second and not overshadow what is a great feature for non-monzo users.
See a well executed transfer through this means and im sure the person will ask me more questions about monzo as a result of it.
Thanks for all the feedback regarding how this works and the “Sign up to Monzo” button in particular. It’s a tricky balance to get this right, as of course we want more people to sign up to monzo rather than send the payment out to another bank, but if we build a feature that people aren’t comfortable to use, then not many will sign up through it.
Personally I also think offering an extra £10 and the ability to make easier payments with this person in the future makes it worth it to emphasise the sign-up option as the default, especially given that there’s no additional friction (apart from a de-emphasised button) in sending it straight out to another UK account. Whether this is communicated in the right way to the sender and recipient is another question, however, as it’s clear that many of you are uncomfortable with the idea of sending a payment link if it looks like a referral tool. I’d love to hear from people who managed to use the feature for real payments and how it went, and what the recipient said! That will surely help us make this more natural to use.
The Payments tab is under scrutiny internally right now for being cluttered and incoherent. This seems to be at least part of the reason for referrals feeling pushy and overbearing. There’s at least 3 places on the payments tab which link out to referrals and the “Pay anyone” feature has (to a lesser extent) an invite flow linked to it. We are looking to improve this tab and unify some of these flows to feel more natural in the coming months, and I hope that would address some of the concerns raised above.
Have to say that I disagree with this. I think that most people will be confused by “via a link” (a link to what? what do I do with it? how? etc.), and similarly most people don’t differentiate between SMS/iMessage/WhatsApp/etc. “by text”, to me, covers all messaging services, even if that’s not technically accurate. But I think avoiding techy terminology here is the right thing to do.
but if I sent someone a pay link, my concern would be that they’re like “what on earth is Monzo?”. There’s no mention of a bank 
or banking on the initial screenshots.
So I’ve read 90k posts, but only commented 250 times 