Monzo Plus - Bi-Weekly Update 14th November 2019

But they’ll have no way of knowing if the card is valid.

Back in the old days, the numbers could be written onto the carbonised forms, so a non-embossed card could still be used, presumably.

I guess they didn’t mind taking the risk that the card had been cancelled, then?

My point was that banks will accept the carbon slips even if they have been written out. There is no requirement to be put through the slider device.

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I did a bit of research, and it turns out this is not the case in Japan, where I bumped into this issue. Japan Merchant Services and Mitsui Sumitomo say they will not accept handwritten slips prepared from unembossed cards for processing.

If this was some small country that barely saw any tourists I would have just left it at that, but I figured it bears mentioning because Japan is a fairly popular travel destination, and the 2020 Olympics next year will mean even more visitors going. So yeah, bring an embossed card (good thing Monzo is).

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Free tier should be pretty much what we have now AND CHEQUE IMAGING PLEASE

Then have mid tier for around £6 that has things like coloured cards, interest, increased limits, and maybe some other things like increased pot limit and custom categories?

Then have a more premium account maybe £12-20 a month that has mobile insurance, maybe travel insurance, metal card, interest and increased limits

Also have “investor” still show on the Monzo Plus cards :frowning:

And can you start having a proper voting for features thing? You guys keep saying “we have prioritised this because we think you guys don’t want it” but how do you know this? Things like cheque imagine? You say only a small percent of users actually deposit cheques but the reason people don’t deposit them is because it’s such a hassle!

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I second that with one comment: this feature needs to be inside the app and ask the entire user base what features they want. I know a lot of companies that use Canny inside of their apps to allow users and vote and comment. Maybe it is something worth looking into.

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For what it’s worth I don’t think these should be behind a paywall.

For increased pot limits - that seems an arbitrary limit and as Monzo push more savings pots, bills pots etc I’d expect this to increase anyway.

And custom categories seem pretty basic. I’d be frustrated if the last 2 years of avoiding this much asked for features comes behind a paywall.

Advanced budgeting is one thing but I don’t think alone these two things are paywall worthy.

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HSBC offering looks worse than the NationWide offering when comparing like for like insurances. HSBC does offer some decent options that could replace things like my British Gas boiler cover which I pay £20pm for currently.

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I’m not sure it’s comparable. Nationwide use cheaper insurance companies to underwrite, if you look at reviews of the relevant companies provided…

Nationwide Breakdown - LV Britannia, not the best
Nationwide Mobile - Lifestyle Services Group - Well we all know these guys are not great, used by the majority of packaged insurances.
Nationwide Travel - U.K Insurance - Not even sure who these are.

HSBC Breakdown = RAC = One of the best
HSBC Mobile - Aviva - Again a decent insurer, a good insurer and underwrite the more expensive packaged insurances
HSBC Travel - Aviva - Known good provider, Monzo use them for legacy Plus v2

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Good to know, I do rate Aviva highly. Hopefully Monzo partner with good insurance companies.

Every feature in every software product costs time and money to build, and time and money to maintain. Further, maintenance costs are by far the dominant factor over the software lifecycle. So I don’t really think that this narrows down which features would end up paywalled. I very much hope that you stick to features that “only a minority of our customer base really care about”.

I think that there’s one red line, and that’s budgeting features. The vast majority of people care about good budgeting features. You can’t make money work for everyone if budgeting is paywalled. Budgeting is the essential first half of making money work for everyone. It doesn’t really matter if you get a slightly better rate on your ISA if there’s a giant hole in the other side of your ship.

This is a very important point. Please heed it.

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I don’t worry so much about the “minority of users” vs “costs us money to do” bit (as I think that is an ‘and’ scenario).

But what I do worry about is Monzo drawing poor conclusions from their data to determine ‘minority of users’.

e.g.

Paying in Cash - Data shows that <x% of users do this currently - therefore not a wanted feature - when in reality users who do want it probably don’t use monzo for it due to fees or inconvenience. Same with Cheque Imaging I would guess too.

And conversely they could build features sets, that if advertised properly and used as ‘the hook’ could get more vast interest from consumers.

The “Get Paid Early” thing is a good example of the latter for me. I don’t want the feature. I don’t need the feature. As far as I know it was never voiced by the users this is something they want. I’ve used it every time it’s there, just because I can. Monzo has spent development time on this, and then went on to use it as a great selling point.

That’s the whole point about these features - you can use them to attract people to your service. If Get Paid Early was behind a paywall, because it is indeed a time and resource cost to develop, I couldn’t imagine signing up for that.

Which is why I think the though process of “minority of the user base want this” is flawed, for a lot of features.

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NatWest/RBS just announced they’re restructuring their Reward accounts from Feb 2020 so cashback is now a flat rate instead of a %.

I am likely to be one of many people to be moving away because of this change… so a perfect time for Monzo to be announcing some movement towards a Plus offering!

I can wait a bit but it’s likely I’ll have to move to Santander/Halifax

To me this is a perfect example of how investing time and development into a feature that you offer for free to everyone is an excellent way to advertise Monzo and the benefits of using it as you main account.

Similarly I think offering advanced budgeting features, offered for free to everyone, would provide a great incentive for people to use Monzo as their main account and better manage their money as a result. If customers are then managing their money better and are able to save money in Pots etc. Monzo have a greater balance they can use to generate income through lending and investments (like all banks do).

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Please read the following article - I think you may be confused. Monzo are a Bank.
Sure they have a higher focus on technology and their app as they don’t have branches, but they are a bank.

All of the regulations that apply to Natwest or Santander also apply to Monzo, and all of the revenue opportunities that apply to Natwest or Santander also apply to Monzo too.

Yes they absolutely can ask for money for handling transactions, and they do do that with cash and cheque deposits. They choose not to pass on the costs of foreign cash withdrawals as this is a key marketing proposition for Monzo and worth their investment to cover the cost. However when people started to abuse this by opening accounts purely for free withdrawals abroad they had to put monthly limits in place. Above that limit you pay a fee, or you could pay a monthly fee to increase that limit.

Monzo also takes a fee for international transfers through their partnership with TransferWise

How much does it cost?
“TransferWise charge a small fee for each overseas payment you make, of which a small share goes to Monzo. This will always be shown transparently before you send any money and it’ll never cost you more money because you’re going through Monzo.”

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Thank you for sharing the articles in question. I already knew them.

I was trying to make a point in the fact that Monzo is a FinTech company that started taking a technology approach to issues in the finance/banking industry and offered prepaid cards. They then had a change of being financed from venture capital and applied to a banking licence.

Again just so no one else thinkS I am confused. I don’t want Monzo to be just a bank. I want (what most of the Monzo users I know also want) for Monzo to be more that just a Bank. They have potential and I hope they manage to fulfil that potential.

Looking forward to the next update today :slight_smile:

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I’m hoping for at least an outline of the new offer. :crossed_fingers:

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Answers to the questions raised in this thread would be a good start.

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Closing this thread off to continue the conversation with our latest update: Monzo Plus - Bi-Weekly Update 28th November 2019

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