Hello, Iām Tom 
For a number of reasons, things just havenāt gone the way they should have with Monzo Plus so far this year. And ultimately itās you, our early adopters, who felt that frustration the most. Thanks for hanging in there and sharing your feedback along the way.
Weāre going back to basics and starting from the beginning. While we are fortunate to see our customer base growing faster than ever, itās important we take steps now to ensure weāre moving towards becoming a sustainable business. One of our biggest opportunities for this is a paid subscription that unlocks more value for our customers and gives us steady revenue in return.
So forget what you know about Monzo Plus, or what weāve told you. Everything is on the table.
New team, new product, new name?
Last week @Sheri shared an update on how weāre rethinking Monzo Plus thanks to your feedback. Since then, weāve decided to go one step further and start from the very beginning.
Weāve added some fresh eyes to this project by cycling in some other Monzo team members to approach this challenge.
Say hello to your team:
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Product Manager: Rich Cadman -
Product Marketer: @tomdavies () -
User Researcher: Naomi -
Designer: Vuokko -
Data Scientist: Francine -
Business Analysts: Alicia and Sam -
iOS Engineer: Dylan -
Android Engineer: Brad
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Backend Engineers: Tim and Constantijn (Tech Lead)
This team will be working 
% on a paid subscription offering and wonāt be splitting their time across any other Monzo initiatives. This is the biggest priority for Monzo over the next few months and weāre committed to getting it right.
Why a new team? Though things didnāt go according to plan, we tried our very best to build something that you would value and be proud of. Some of the team needed a fresh challenge, so it was a natural time to freshen things up. Everyone will be finding other impactful areas in the business to work on.
A smaller, more nimble team can focus hard on the problem until we really need to grow. With that focus, and the fresh perspective weāre bringing in, itās our best chance of achieving success.
What about old Monzo Plus stuff?
Weāll be the first to say that Monzo Plus isnāt the best it could be. And as we work hard to make sure we get it right this time, we want to make sure you arenāt stuck with an offering that doesnāt work for you. If you have an existing subscription and want to cancel, you can at any time by contacting customer support in the app.
This also means we wonāt be sending out any swag or holding metal card draws like we had hoped to initially. If youāve chosen our Supporter bundle, weāll be automatically refunding the amount youāve paid in fees plus some interest because youāre missing out on some of the features we offered. I know this is frustrating, but it was a tough decision we had to make so our small team can focus on delivering a paid offering you can really be proud of. We hope you understand.
If you have a Supporter bundle, thereās nothing you need to do. Weāll be following up with all Monzo Plus customers via email with more details in the next week or so.
Regular updates to our community
We realise that we didnāt work close enough with you over the last few months to make sure you were involved in what was going on. Thank you for being vocal about your thoughts on our direction.
So hereās our plan for making sure youāre involved. Please let me know in a reply if you have other recommendations:
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Weekly updates - likely on a Thursday, with what we have done throughout the week. We might not always have concrete plans to share, but in those instances weāll run other stuff by you, hold Q&As with different team members to see what theyāre working on, or just let you know what weāve got planned for the weekend. Rain, hail or shine, youāll be hearing from us. This is the same stuff weāll be sharing internally with other teams at Monzo, so youāll be seeing what everyone sees. -
Radical transparency, without over-promising - we guarantee to overshare with you, where it makes sense. Below youāll see our first test, but weāve redacted some details so we donāt impact the results. There may be some times where we talk about testing certain features in a paid subscription (jetpacks, free haircuts, Monzo card made of pure gold) but keep in mind that for a variety of reasons these can change and might not make it in. -
We promise to hear you out, in the context of our 3,000,000 customers - weāve realised that as our customer base changes, sometimes the most important features for our community arenāt necessarily the most important for our broader customer base. So as much as we love (and encourage) your ideas, we hope you understand that sometimes we need to prioritise features that a majority of our customers will value. Weāll be clear and upfront when this is the case, but this shouldnāt dissuade you from being vocal about the things you really believe should be considered. Our hope is that we can get this balance right together.
Sooā¦ what now?
Excellent question. Iām glad you asked.
Weāve made some great progress in understanding mental models around paid subscriptions. So much so, that weāve got two things going out soon that we need your help with:
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Survey: help us understand how you prioritise different features over each other by completing this short survey.
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Smoke test: weāll tell our customers theyāre about to be shown something that doesnāt exist yet to get their feedback. It looks a little like this below, but weāve removed some of the package details. Head into the app and you might find it. Keep in mind weāre very much testing this stuff out. Any price, feature, design, colour, or flow you see isnāt something we plan on including or excluding from a paid subscription. So ignore those specifics for now.
The Plan
Our general plan is to test early, and test often. This might be running tests in the app or using other methods like user testing or surveying. Our goal is to make this paid subscription crystal clear for you to understand, valuable for our customers, and sustainable for us as a business.
Weāre taking our first steps based on whatās most irreversible. So, right now, weāre focusing less on the exact cards, the exact name, the exact features, or even the number of plans we have. Thatās because we think we can change these later. We care more about the direction (such as who is this for and what are the first one or two features) and building a really exceptional product and experience. Thatās because itās harder to recover if we get those wrong.
Weāll make sure to share our plans as they develop. In the meantime, share your ideas in our survey or let your creativity run will with your your thoughts below 
