Virgin also offers 2% on their current account (no fee) for balances up to £1000.
1 Like
Don’t see the point of applying for a Virgin account for the sake of £20pa.
Real desperation there!
. . . and another credit check regardless of overdraft requirement or not!
It’s nice, but it is what it is…would have preferred a preferential savings rate for plustomers, when I first saved with Monzo I had 1.5%. Now, I don’t save with Monzo because you offer .30 which is,well, “Meh”
So if you were a plustomer and got 1pc on balances up to 5k for example, I’d save with Monzo
I agree its not a lot of interest - but not sure I’d class it as desperation. I’m happy to take Branson’s money. You can add a joint account and that’s £40 year - for free, vs Monzo’s £20 on the same amount - not worth it unless you think the other Plus benefits are worth £5/month alone (and if you do, there’s no obligation to keep £2000 sitting idle in your Monzo account when you could get (double/slightly) more interest elsewhere…).
Virgin’s application process is on a par with Monzo. I did a Virgin application on the sofa last week - takes all of 5 minutes (didn’t even have to get dressed to do an ID video 
). You also get a 0.5% savings account which you can put as much as you like in.
That means you could save £6000 in Virgin - for free - at the same effective rate that you get with Monzo Plus. Ironically, the interest would cover the Monzo Plus fee in full.
I’m not being anti-Monzo Plus. But more important than whether £20/year is worth it for 5 minutes work is that if you see Monzo Plus’ interest as anything other than a nice bonus, you’re doing money wrong.
3 Likes
For clarity @dan2, I am not a Monzo Plus subscriber either.
I see no value in that product at the moment, for me personally.
Oh, and j think you need a second person for a joint account. I’m free and single 
I’m not quite seeing the logic here. You are saying you wouldn’t use pots for budgeting because you don’t get any interest, so, you’ll pay £5 a month to use something that’s free and if you have the maximum amount available in your account, £2,000, you will earn £1.66 a month in interest, so in effect costing you only £3.40 month for plus?
If you meant using the custom categories with pots then that’s obviously different.
Apologies in advance I’d misunderstood your usage.
No. I’d be earning approx 1% interest somewhere regardless of whether or not I had Plus so working out a net price for Plus based on £5 minus interest earned through Plus is in my mind an irrelevance.
What I’m saying is the value of the interest as a Plus feature is not simply the money earned (since I can earn that anywhere). But its presence in Monzo Plus does have (less tangible) value because it means I have a reason to use one of Monzo’s features that I would not otherwise have used (regular pots). So for me personally regular pots is a specific feature of Monzo Plus even though it is available in Monzo Free.
Obviously I wouldn’t pay £5/month just to use Monzo Pots. But regular pots is now a feature that can be added to my personal judgement of whether £5/month is good value for the overall set of features.
3 Likes
I agree that it’s the one area where the “you don’t get any interest” argument is fatally flawed.
If someone is paying their £5 for Monzo Plus because they want all of the other features then they’d be paying it whether their was any interest offered or not.
Under these circumstances then the 1% interest rate suddenly becomes beneficial (assuming that the only money in the account is what’s needed to run the account and no more) because it is extra to what would otherwise be gained if no interest were paid.
It’s easy to assume that everyone factors the interest into the cost/benefit analysis but that simply isn’t true and so isn’t a valid condition on which to base a universal statement of benefits.
2 Likes
I agree with you there, paying for the other features and also getting interest is a benefit. Paying just for the interest doesn’t make financial sense.
Didn’t mean to sound accusatory - I had intended ‘you’ in the most general case 
I may be tempted if virtual cards from pots comes around and/or they do a metal card that doesn’t have a horrible sticker on the back. 1% on your monthly income while its waiting to get spent isn’t bad (in the current climate).
2 Likes
Monzo should re-market this as a £1 per month discount for Plus Membership
It’s a little more than £1. If you keep £2,000 in your account at all times, it’s a 33% discount. Given that it acts and behaves like interest, I have no issue with them called it interest.
1 Like
I think (well, vaguely logical guess) that it’s to increase the cash directly under Monzo’s name, rather than the current savings pots with other banks. More cash on the books, more loans they can offer, more profitability, etc.
Removing it and making Plus £4 would remove that entirely.
4 Likes
How did you arrive at that figure?
It poses a curious question. How would people feel about Plus if it were instead £4 and had no interest?
5 Likes
It would be great to choose a pot (e.g. my roundup pot) to have the interest paid into (or at least automatically transferred into) rather than my main balance.
1 Like
Personally, it changes nothing for me. I don’t get much use from the basic money management features, and while I’m not opposed to paying for software, I think what is being charged for here and the amount is extremely poor value.
But your question does raise an interesting point - should those opting out of interest for whatever reason (personal, moral, religious, etc.) receive a discount? 
1 Like
2000×0.01×.6÷12=1
2k deposit, 1% interest rate, less higher rate tax, divided by 12 months, 1 pound a month.
If one pays tax on savings, we are literally throwing money away to HMRC.
That’s why many banks do “cashback” instead of interest (Santander 123 bills cashback, Barclays Blue rewards, NatWest Rewards / Rewards Black) as that is not classed as income and is thus not taxed.
I would prefer cash back with conditions. I.e. top up at least £X a month, have this many direct debits, etc.
However, if Monzo wants to increase amounts of deposits carried then they should keep as interest. The convenience of instant access, is enough for me to keep more spare cash in Monzo rather than moving to Marcus / NS&I, as the .05% or 0.16% difference is not significant enough over all the faff of moving money in out all the time.
1 Like
I think ease of access rather than instant is the biggest reason to keep a sizeable deposit stowed directly in my Monzo current account. Marcus withdrawals are near instant (usually under a minute). But I can certainly see myself keeping my first £500 to £1000 in Monzo without feeling too bad about it. It will come in handy in the event of an emergency, or if I‘ve underestimated my spending budget slightly. But only because it’s easier than having to first login to Marcus and initiate a transfer when I’m in a pinch.
how do i create a pot to start getting interest on it