Monzo Plus and Premium (2020) for Joint Accounts

Feedback & Ideas
#23

Thanks for the update Richard.

We moved our joint account to monzo pretty early on and no real complaints - works well as a basic account and saved us a tonne of fx fees.

Our joint account receives our salaries, pays our bills and is where our discretionary joint spending goes. We then pay ourselves an ‘allowance’ monthly to our individual accounts which we can spend on what we want (I have no interest in tracking this spend as is purely play money).

This setup works really well for us. It does mean we have almost no interest in plus on our individual accounts but would love it on the joint account.

11 Likes
#24

Most of the same points I’d make are replicated above but will add my voice to it since getting Monzo Plus sufficiently motivated me to create forum account to login and say this.

Love the concept of Monzo Plus - much better implementation of the premium features than the last attempt; Greater automation & flexibility & “single view of accounts” is clear value add I’m willing to pay for… And the main monzo attraction to me (and product strategy I expect!) has been to reduce friction, increase visibility, and increase automation in managing my finances. MonzoPlus fits into that nicely.

However, as many have said, as I’m maturing in my life and now married, forming a family, getting a house etc etc. And the balance of spending is shifting from a personal account to a joint family account. Long run, that means we’ll (the family) will shift and set up our household financial affairs to the best bank which gives us visibility, automation, budgeting, and ease of friction on that account.

In short, I’ve got plus atm on my personal account. It’s nice, I like trying out and testing new stuff, and now I can see my Amex balance £5/mo isn’t that much to give it a go and the blue card is shiny. What will actually get me to stick with it is:

  • Custom categories on joint account
  • Custom categories / schema on Amex
  • Something at lets me see my & my household spending by category across my monzo account + joint account + credit card each month.

Love Monzo & enthusiastic supporter of plus for Joint Accounts - probably not revenue maximising in the short term given the data points above; but long term valuable probably. I imagine the customer base of Monzo skews younger, who are likely to be settling down over coming years & making more use of joint accounts etc.

5 Likes
#25

I must admit I just went to look at premium and plus… but immediately stopped once I realised it was not for joint accounts. That’s the amount we almost entirely use though still paying Barclays for premium packages around insurance.

One thing to note is that they have gadget insurance whilst monzo is phone only but the lack of joint support was a definite blocker

9 Likes
#26

Just to agree with everyone else. I too would happily pay the extra for Plus, but will not be doing so until I can use this in my Joint account, because as others have said, I do 99% of my activity in that account.

I might have missed something about the survey results, but when I saw Monzo Plus was available I immediately checked that the benefits would work on my Joint Account and, on finding that it did not, never attempted to apply. This presumably skew the results of your survey as only those entering the process and then quitting are being considered, and not those of us that check on these things first before diving into the application process. You’ve probably also got a silent majority who applied for the plus features hoping it would work with the Joint Account, then found it didn’t, but through intertia have not at this stage seen fit to cancel their subscription.

As a developer of Apps myself, I know it’s hard to establish enough value in an app/service combination to attract people to spend a monthly amount on it because “apps should all be free”, but you guys have managed to finally create a bank account that i’d be willing to pay for, you just need to go that one extra step and i’m in.

4 Likes
#27

Agree with several posts here. We pay £15 per month with our current bank for a decent joint current account, and were talking about closing it and moving it to our Monzo joint which we would upgrade to Premium. Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd then we discovered we couldn’t have Premium on a JA. So we applied the brakes.
The custom categories is key for us, which you can only get with Plus or Premium, and you can’t get either on a JA.
Monzo is good, but other banks are catching up, so it wouldn’t take much (tbh) to move away from Monzo to another bank that offers what we need.

What is a little concerning is the approach that I read a while ago of how Monzo do development - i.e. it is pretty free form with no central control. Perhaps I am wrong. Couple that with a lack of proper assessment of what their customers would like in the product (I’ve never seen emails/forum forms that allow me to vote for things I would like). If all of those things are correct and thrown into a melting pot, it does not fill me with confidence that Monzo is going to head in the direction I need it to.

1 Like
#28

Just because Monzo haven’t asked you, doesn’t mean they don’t ask some people. There’s multiple feedback threads about Plus & Premium. JA is mentioned a lot.

And votes don’t mean anything either, there’s topics on here with lots of votes, doesn’t always mean it will happen.

1 Like
#29

A quick search on here will reveal a huge amount of discussion around Plus from staff, including polls, research results and everything in between :confused: It’s all over their social media channels too.

Outside of plus we have loads of topics to vote on. Sometimes you’re asked to test things in app, sometimes you get emails to help with surveys and so on.

I’m not sure where you’ve got this from?

#30

Simply that I have never been approached by Monzo. Like I said, happy to be proved wrong. Been a client for over a year, never had any comms from them other than generic updates on Covid.

#31

Fair point, and it seems like I have to do the leg work on here to make my voice heard.

Agree with your last point. Votes are just one mechanism that the developers will use to decide what to put in.

#32

If you want to be involved you can stick around this community or follow them on socials.

Make sure you opt into the beta version of their app too. This is exactly what companies provide these services for.

2 Likes
#33

I’ve been looking at opening a joint account with NatWest or elsewhere which would include features like travel insurance and mobile insurance. So when I saw the Monzo Premium I thought it would be perfect to open the joint account with those great benefits instead.

It’s disappointing to find out I can’t.

#34

There is a way to give feed to Monzo on Plus/Premium in a way that will be listened to.

Sign up for the free trial (but skip ordering a new card), then cancel it before the two weeks are up. You’ll be asked to give feedback on what wasn’t right for you.

My guess is that the team will take more notice of this than posts here.

Bear in mind, though, that the reason why it isn’t available for joint accounts may be that there are regulatory or technical obstacles which aren’t easy to overcome.

1 Like
#35

I’d be happy for me and my SO to pay separate subscriptions if my joint account could have plus features. We both want to support the organisation, but can’t countenance subscriptions while the main account we both use (the joint) would receive no benefit!

4 Likes
#36

I’m just chiming in as another person who was disappointed to learn that Plus isn’t available for joint accounts. This evening we initiated a current account switch to move our JA to Monzo, and I was looking forward to being able to use custom categories and virtual cards in particular.

It’s my fault for not doing enough research, but in my defence neither the “Introducing Monzo Plus and Monzo Premium” marketing email I received this afternoon nor the Monzo Plus landing page make any mention of the fact that neither upgrade is available for joint accounts.

#37

Completely agree here that the Monzo marketing emails and in-app notifications which have been sent in recent days are lacking transparency about this functionality not being available for joint accounts.

#38

Hi Richard
I am not sure how you prioritise product features - but with regards to Joint accounts. I only joined Monzo because of it. I would hazard a guess that your user base over index against couples, singles and not families.
The partner / married financial market is woefully underserved. Joint budgeting, family account management, etc – all terrible in FS due to the traditional view of banks and accounts.
Most of the Plus / Premium offers (custom budget features) are even more applicable to joint couples. If Monzo doesn’t offer these - but others do - I will leave Monzo immediately.
I appreciate my bias as a married joint account holder - but the problem with survey based responses is they are not necessarily driven by real use cases and real needs in the market.

1 Like
#39

That’s exactly what it was. Real people who were going to sign up but didn’t, and they were asked why. 6% said it was because of lack of JA support.

Monzo know how popular it would be, it’s one of if not the most mentioned requests on here, not just this thread but everytime another feature is mentioned etc.

1 Like