Monzo Plus: The Big Poll

[Peter_G]

After Monzo Plus was launched, we had a very quick (just a couple of days) flash poll to take the immediate temperature of folks on here.

The results were interesting:

• We had lots of voters (212 on the first yes/no question): 64% said they had subscribed to Monzo Plus.

• Of 83 people who wanted to explain why not, 51% felt there weren’t enough features of interest for them yet.

• 46% of people said that they would stick with Monzo Plus if there were new features in the pipeline. 31% of voters said they’d stick with it come what may.

• The top three features were virtual cards, custom categories and other accounts in Monzo. The least popular feature was the offers.

• For the next Plus features, there was an overwhelming preference to link virtual cards to pots (54%), for mobile phone or gadget insurance (37%) and for more connected account providers (34%). (A separate poll shows Amex as being the overwhelming leader there).

Now we’ve had some time to live with Plus for a while, I wanted to repeat the poll to see how opinions have changed (or not), to include some other feature suggestions from the discussion and to give folk much longer to think and respond.

So, without further ado, here’s the Big Plus Poll! Open until the end of August - or sooner if there’s a big Plus feature launch before then.

Edit: I’ve closed the poll today (19th August 2020) as we’re just over a month in from Monzo Plus.

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Have you subscribed to Monzo Plus?

• Yes
• No

If you didn’t, why not?

• Too expensive
• No, or not enough, features of interest
• Disagree with paywalling features
• I haven’t yet but I plan to
• No joint account support
• Something else (tell us below)

If you did, will you stick with it?

• Yes - it’s fine as it is
• Yes - if I get new features
• No
• Unsure

Top 3 Monzo Plus features?

• Other accounts, in Monzo
• Interest on balance and regular pots
• Custom categories
• Holographic card
• Virtual Cards
• Advanced Roundups
• Credit Tracker
• Offers
• Auto-export transactions
• One free cash deposit per month
• Fee-free withdrawals abroad

And the big one… What do you want next in Plus?

• Categories, notes and the Monzo experience for connected accounts
• Budgeting across connected accounts
• Reorder connected accounts
• More connected account providers (vote over here!)
• Export connected accounts to Google Sheets
• Virtual cards linked to Pots
• New app icon(s)
• Dedicated Monzo Plus community section
• More card colour options
• Priority support
• More round-up options (tell us what below)
• Change Monzo.Me username
• Switch off green background on accounts page
• All 3 credit agency scores in app
• Metal card
• Travel insurance
• Mobile phone / gadget insurance
• Change date of Monzo Plus subscription
• Pay Monzo Plus from pot
• Native IFTTT
• More IFTTT triggers / actions
• Nested categories
• Envelope budgeting (like YNAB)
• Bring to joint accounts
• Google Sheets templates (for dashboards, data visualisation, interrogation etc)
• Delete / reorder custom categories
• Bulk change categories
• Visualise / interrogate past spend / better in-app analytics of spending / categories / merchants etc
• Create receipts in Monzo (through OCR or manual entry) - and assign a category per line
• A ‘secrets store’ - somewhere to keep sensitive banking info (like CVVs).
• More colours for custom categories
• Delete / hide standard categories
• Future-proof the Google Sheets export - more information (e.g. payment method of Google Pay vs card) and columns for future use
• Something else (tell us what below!)

[Peter_G]

I’ve missed one out again

I’d really like the round-up option to actually, you know, round-up. Micro-savings are good and important, but feel like a discrete feature.

Edit: much more elegantly explained by @stripyshirtguy over here:

Strange logic for "Advanced roundups" on Monzo Plus?

I don’t understand the product reasoning behind “Advanced roundups” We can round up a payment to the nearest pound and put your spare change in a Pot. We’ll multiply your spare change by 2, 5 or 10. With the 2 times advanced roundup on, spending £1.90 would put 20p (10p x 2 = 20p) in a separate Pot. If you spend £1.90, you want to round to £2. If you multiply it randomly, like with x2, then it’s £2.10, and you’re not rounding, you’re doing the opposite. Un…rounding? Neither your transaction …

Hit the like if you want this too.

[BritishLibrary]

Can I also perhaps suggest a poll for “have you signed up but since cancelled?” as that seemed to be a thing in the last 7 days.

[BritishLibrary]

_{Also, this poll is incredibly high quality. I’m glad to see you’re polling responsibly again.}

[Peter_G]

I’m glad. But for clarity do you like this poll?

• Yes
• No
• Anne Boden

[ndrw]

Should @Peter_G be allowed to create any more polls?

• No
• Nope
• I want a metal card

[gt94sss2]

It would have been nice if we could choose multiple options in the “Why you haven’t gone for Plus” question

[dan2 (Dan)]

Nobody likes the offers.

Great opportunity here for Monzo to disassociate from Babylon health, could just about get away with claiming that it was just an accident that they ended up on the side of people looking to privatise the NHS by the back door.

[duncang (Duncan)]

I don’t really understand why people want gadget insurance - you can already get that by just paying an insurance company for it. Whereas you can’t get, say, custom categories or virtual cards on your joint account. It’s also in the antipattern of indirectly paying for random stuff via your bank account, which I strongly hope Monzo avoid doing. Want insurance? Buy some damn insurance!

[Chalky (Daniel White)]

I’m really not keen on them adding loads of Insurance options unless it’s a separate tier.

[Peter_G]

@duncang

don’t really understand why people want gadget insurance

So I voted for both travel and phone insurance. I was in two minds so let me tell you why.

Fundamentally, it comes down to the value proposition. I haven’t been able to find something separately with as good value as the Nationwide FlexPlus account. If I could, then I’d do that.

@duncang

It’s also in the antipattern of indirectly paying for random stuff via your bank account,

Conversely, I do agree with this. But we don’t live in a perfect world and if I can get better value from a packaged account then so be it.

[aCCount]

I can understand the desire for packaged insurance if you think it’s going to represent good value but I’d be against trying to lump software features (like budgeting) with the insurance bundles. It strikes me as a weird mish mash of features that’s unlikely to please anyone.

[Peter_G]

My assumption - and it’s only an assumption - was that they’d be a metal tier with the software features but also the insurance packages etc.

Unfortunately Covid seems to have put paid to that - for the moment at least.

[BritishLibrary]

I’m definitely in the opposing camp of bundled in insurance.

At least as far as the Core tier goes.

I can appreciate the value, perhaps, if it’s an incremental tier to the current one - but I’m currently really unlikely to sign up to an insurance-bundled offering - as I’m currently decently insured for the things I need right now.

If the current Plus started offering Gadget insurance, and then pushed the price up by £4/m, I’d end up closing it down, because I don’t need the extra insurance, and I don’t want to pay £4 more for the current set otherwise.

The same holds true if there are different features (i.e. software features, not financial products) in a Premium tier, that come with Insurance products.

I’d be much more likely to splurge on the features on the Premium Tier, if the Insurance isn’t integral to the package. Happy if that means Premium then bolt on additional insurance though.

[dan2 (Dan)]

@BritishLibrary

I’m definitely in the opposing camp of bundled in insurance.

Me too. But I suspect this won’t work.

If you give it to everyone, then you have a lot of infrequent travellers effectively subsidising frequent travellers who are more likely to need to claim, thus the cost per-user (taken out of your Monzo Plus fee and paid to the insurer) is lower because a lot of people are paying for something they rarely use.

If you make it opt-in, then people will only take it if they are going to actually need it - the infrequent travellers will just take single-trip policies from insurers as they need them, rather than take on an transparent/unnecessary regular expense. The insurer will end up with more claims per user, and thus will charge more.

Balancing/hiding costs like this is a tricky game that only works at scale - like say a nation-wide scale :).

[JIMMWX (Village Idiot)]

If Monzo were able to do budgeting for ALL accounts (including connected legacy accounts) this would be a BIG reason for sticking with plus once the trial is over

[BritishLibrary]

I guess my main feeling is that I wouldn’t want a package that mixes insurance-type offerings with other software features.

I completely agree about the over coverage of insurance and the obvious benefit of more people in a package (and after Plus V1 and 2 I went and subscribed to Nationwide…)

More specifically I guess I’m adverse to software tiers and financial products being bundled together. Happy for an offering that is primarily Insurance based to come out.

But what I’d be against is where that comes with software features that only apply if you get that package.

[fmrtsvl]

I want cash back. Higher then revolut

[Peter_G]

Note to self: missed “add virtual card to Google or Apple Pay”

(Hit like again if you like the idea. I’m very much pro).

[JIMMWX (Village Idiot)]

Genuine question - can someone capture card details from Apple/Google Pay because I don’t believe they could - I’m struggling to understand the point of having a virtual card within ApplePay?