Monzo Plus - Flash Poll(s)!

Extending Plus to the Joint Account is a must - for the Custom Categories. But I imagine that some sort of Joint Account offering is in the works - I think that I saw a staff member post as such somewhere already.

I was on the fence about the last version of Monzo plus, I thought it was on the edge of being good/useful/worth paying for, but needed some tweaking.

Below is my initial thoughts when I saw Monzo latest offering. Convince me to change my negative view and show me the worth-while positives that make it worth giving Monzo £60 a year!

  1. 1% interest on up to Ā£2000, If I was on basic rate tax, that’s Ā£16 interest a year! Less if you pay higher tax rates.

  2. Holographic card in an age where less and less people even bother pulling a card out of their wallet, or even bother taking a wallet with them anymore because all payments can be done via your phone. People fought hard to keep banks handing out cheque books. It’s like this all over again. Cards have their place and times when they are useful, but a card design simply isn’t worth paying money for.

  3. Virtual cards - How is this any better than existing technology provided by your smart phone which everyone of your customers already have. Apple/Google pay or paypal have been around for years! I trust Apple’s security more than Monzo’s.

  4. Credit tracking - this is done for free by so many apps, a great one being ClearScore

  5. Exports into GOOGLE (we track everything) sheets? Why would you want to force people into google sheets when you could just automate exporting CSV, use Siri Shortcuts as another example, or IFTTT for a 3rd example. Google sheets is a mess.

  6. Seeing other bank accounts - This was actually an interesting idea. However, can you please be clear about what Monzo see’s and tracks when I connect my bank accounts into your app.

I simply don’t understand what it is I would be paying for. I spend Ā£5 a month on a TV subscription and I get entertainment for my family for so many hours each month. But for Ā£5 a month with Monzo I get… to create new categories to divide my payments into. Oh and Ā£16 interest if my tax rate is in the right bracket.

I think time and money would have been better spent on investment products that help change the mentality of this country from constantly borrowing and spending on needless stuff, to encourage people to save money, invest it, clear their debts.

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LMAO, why would you need to link a virtual card to Apple Pay?
Apple Pay uses virtual card when you pay via the service, people do not see your actual bank card they see an apple one.

I do disagree with some of your points - and for me there is a valid use case:

The great thing here is this is literally all my data - and I can then go on and do what I please with it; knowing it is always live and accurate. For people who’ve asked for better tracking, better budgeting, better overviews - this allows for that. There are so many examples already of people making powerful dashboards of their data.

CSV export is already available, IFTTT has limited capabilities. So sure other integrations might be good, but this is a good feature, if you are at all interested in the Data.

The point is not so much about different technology, but having the ability to have discrete card details that can be used for different purposes. This feature isn’t about trusting Monzo over apple - it’s litereally just another card you can use. It might be a bit basic right now, but the future of this will hopefully come with many more functions.

If Pay from Pot becomes possible - it unlocks a whole new way of spending allocated funds. My use case would be to link my Virtual Card as my defualt transit card for travel. Comes from my ā€œTrainsā€ budget. Or you could set one up on your Kids phone with a limited spend value, etc. The fact that Apple is already Virtual is not the point of the use case - it’s about ring fencing your money and spending differently.

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It’s only Ā£16 if you’ve already used up your personal savings allowance of Ā£1,000 tax free interest per year elsewhere. For those who haven’t (i.e. almost everyone) the interest is Ā£20/year.

I see it as software upgrades (e.g. enhanced categorization, account aggregation, virtual cards, extra round up savings options, auto-exports) mixed in with a few non-software extras (e.g. new card, in-credit interest, some foreign spending and PayPoint benefits).

I don’t know how you feel about paying for software but I think those who are not keen on paying for software are less likely to be impressed.

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I think that’s a fair view - I’m hoping that the software features (mainly data) can help me save more money, to make it worth it.

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Personally I’d like the option of just paying for software enhancement without any of the other stuff. Assuming account aggregation gets improved (so that it gets enrichment, analytics, budgeting etc) I’d certainly pay something like Ā£2 per month for software enhancements on its own.

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Not only am I not subscribing to Monzo Plus, I’m reconsidering Monzo full stop.

Basically, joint account support is terrible. Why can’t I pay my Monzo loan from my joint account? Use my arranged overdraft on my joint account? Use Monzo Plus on my joint account?

Monzo are losing their USP. They are no longer way ahead of their competitors. They’re getting dragged backwards and other banks are catching up. Charging for Monzo Plus and not even allowing joint account support is appalling.

It’s been fun Monzo, but I’ll be looking again at Starling as my primary account provider.

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Excuse me? I can comment on whatever I please, it has nothing to do with you. My opinion is equally as valid as yours. I might have only just registered but I’m a long time Monzo user.

Or is this community only for those who blindly praise Monzo?

I didn’t say Monzo was rubbish. I said they risk undoing the good will they have built up over the years. So like I say, jog on

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I have to agree with @ndrw here - you’re more than entitled to your opinion, but I think most of us have very little idea about how much effort goes into the smallest of features.

I imagine expanding certain features into a joint account is not only difficult, but also very time consuming and (possibly) not necessarily as much of a demand as some might think, seeing as we don’t all have a joint account but all of us have a sole account with Monzo.

I know it’s obviously features you care about, and that’s perfectly fine, but I think it’s easy to forget that Monzo doesn’t yet have the backing that a lot of other banks do, especially when Monzo are putting their efforts into making a user-friendly and technologically advanced banking experience for users so things are transparent and easy to use/navigate.

To be fair, it was his attitude that got my back up. You may be right about the effort involved in making the product joint account compliant but I don’t appreciate being told that my opinion is worthless.

Again, just an opinion, but not a good introduction to the community, and not a good way to make people feel welcome.

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I hear you. I just assumed that I was in a community of adults where honest opinions would be valued rather than fanboys who are offended at any criticism of the product in question.

But thanks, I’ll take your advice on board

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In contrast, I’d say their feedback as an otherwise new forum user who isn’t ā€˜tainted’ by the community providing the points which are now making them reconsider using Monzo is extremely valuable.

If it were an app I’d developed, this is the type of feedback that I’d be paying most attention to. Here we have a user who has taken the time to register to the forum in order to provide the reasons for why they feel they have to look at other options. Contrast that to the hundreds/thousands of users who just silently leave providing no opportunity to improve.

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This isn’t aimed specifically at you, just a comment on this sentiment in general as I’ve seen it mentioned a few times, but I find the whole idea basing feedback on not upsetting the developers to be crazy.

I’ll grant that feedback should ideally be constructive and there is no reason for anyone to be impolite, but thinking about whether your comments might disappoint the person who worked on some particular feature shouldn’t even occur in the mind of the average customer. That’s before even considering that every piece of feedback that isn’t just positive provides an opportunity to improve.

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Monzo is a business, not a person.

The staff were employed to create Plus and they delivered. They have been paid for their service thus I’m sure they will cope with any negative user input.

Being reflective is also key for any professional. Sticking to dogma can be a detriment to themselves as a person and Monzo as a company.

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We’re getting off topic, so I’ll say this, then insist we move on:

There’s no rule against giving feedback. Everyone is entitled to an opinion - the key is how you deliver it.

This place is different because (on occasion) we have direct dialogue with the people behind the product. I think all that is asked (or should be asked) is to give feedback as if you were doing it in person. That probably means less of ā€œthis is rubbishā€ and more of ā€œthis doesn’t work for me. Here’s whyā€¦ā€

Now, back on topic please!

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Let’s move on from discussion about the discussion now please. :pray:

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Removed Posts - July 20

Ok, but where do we discuss the discussion about the discussion?

On topic though, one thing I’ve realised I want / wanted Plus to have, after playing with the Data export, is more tools to do analysis of the data. And maybe more support for some advanced features in Google Sheets.

A few examples of what I would have like to see:

  • Better in-app analytics of spending / categories - etc. Everyone’s been talking about Dashboards - so why not have more detailed options in app.

  • Templates in Google Sheets - again having the data dump is one thing, having the knowledge to do stuff with it is another. Specific example - if you want to do analysis on category splits with your data in Google - you have to write a Google Script. I’m decent enough with Excel but I think this is a stretch for most users. But the same applies for building Dashboards too.

  • To that point again, there’s been a few tweets of Monzo staff developing their own dashboards - great! - but it would be great too to have some of those publicly available.

  • Long Term data structure in this export - I think this could be improved for future proofing things like presence of Joint Accounts or which VCard was purchased on etc. (i.e. there’s potential a future update to the data set could break existing dashboards).

  • Finally, I’d love to see Monzo publish more IFTTT integration ideas - there’s been a huge thread showcasing what you can do with IFTTT and the Data Export - some of those abilities are so powerful I think Monzo could make a better point of showing those off.

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Edit: Letters in the wrong places.

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