I’m going on a trip to the USA in a couple of monthsand will be meeting up with friends who live out there. We’ve booked hotels etc which I’ve paid for (using my loyalty points to get us better discounts).
What would be really great is if I could send them a Monzo.Me link for them to re-pay me, but they could pay in USD meaning that they wouldn’t get fees for international payments from their own banks.
I totally understand that the currency could fluctuate, so as the person requesting funds I would need to check a box allowing them to make the payment in local currency and confirming I would take the potential hit if the rate changed between payment & settlement, but I think this would be great for people who want to bill split with friends overseas.
As far as I know, Monzo.me transfer is technically a payment, where Monzo is the merchant, located in the UK. So unless Monzo want to get set up as a US merchant, then absorb cross border & conversion fees when they move the funds to the UK accounts (which would be relatively expensive & time consuming), unfortunately I don’t think this will be possible.
It’s also worth noting that Monzo.me may not be offered once the current accounts launch. Apart from anything else, there is a cost for processing the transactions at the moment for Monzo & obviously there will be less of a need for the service, once users can receive transfers through the Faster Payments Scheme.
Also, Tom has mentioned that when the current accounts launch, Monzo will offer their first service through a partnership with an international money transfer provider (possibly TransferWise but that’s all we know for now) which may help with similar situations…
It would but given that Monzo doesn’t want to charge fees, I’m not sure that they’ll want to keep absorbing the cost forever.
Having said that, whenever this has come up, the Monzo team has said that nothing’s been decided yet & they’d obviously like to keep the service, if it’s feasible.
I’d miss Monzo.me so much; so I hope it stays after current accounts launch.
I mostly use it as my parents aren’t up on technology (both can use a tablet, so they’re not non techie.) but both flat out refuse to trust/won’t do online banking.
I showed them how Monzo.me works and entered in how much owed after I put the card details in and done. Mum gets a little email reciept and the payment is all done.
We don’t have any plans to close Monzo.me. Especially after the current account is launched we’ll have more time to work on making it as powerful as we know it can be
Multi-currency support is a neat idea. There’s no reason it couldn’t work technically.
Right now, we’re focussed on making Monzo.me/bill-splitting more discoverable within the app. I was talking with the product team about this earlier today. Exciting updates !