Totally agree, its as simple as don’t make me pay for things I don’t need. I guess what I was trying to say is I expect that Monzo would struggle to get the scale necessary to make the cost for things like insurance so low they can bundle enough stuff together that I don’t care I’m paying for travel insurance I don’t need.
Thus I’m hoping compulsory insurance doesn’t come into any offerings. Offering bargain-basement travel/gadget insurance is only going to backfire when people find out how limited their ‘free’ insurance is (wait, you’re not putting me in a 5* hotel for my 14 day quarantine?!).
Plus / Premium should absolutely stick to banking features. Monzo already have a good model for selling extras like insurance with their energy switching service. This could be be a much better way to present insurance offerings (to all) and plus/premium could get a discount on insurance products if you want/need then.
I’d want it in tandem with pay from a pot. But even on its own it makes sense to me - for example I could freeze my card and keep it at home. Or not replace it if it’s damaged, saving on a replacement.
I’d also really like to see children’s cards (put money in a designated pot, issue a physical card with their name on, choice of colour and optionally give them a simple app/web page to ‘manage’ their card when they’re ready).
This is the other thing I’ve concluded I’ll (soon) have to pay for banking-wise, and right now I’d go and pay Revolut for this. Seems like Monzo are missing an opportunity to build brand loyalty here.
I’d have no interest in a plus with bundled insurance product. I don’t care what they call things… Some people might see this as a good option, but this feels like a slippery slope to the confusing multiple package option that Monzo pulled.
I’m looking for a ‘premium’ package that has actual finance features - Monzo Elite/Platinum/Fintech-nerd perhaps?
That’s for marketing to decide But I would note that Revolut have bundled this into their ‘premium’ (and also ‘metal’) tiers.
If it went into plus at the same price point, I’d sign up when kids old enough. I wouldn’t care if Plus lost other features (like offers) to make this possible. If it was a separate tier/product/option I’d consider it instead of Plus.
For me the value would be if and when pay from pot arrives, and I guess better controls over limits, if that comes too. But assuming both of these do happen:
Pay direct from pot on the fly with my phone.
more specifically, I can set up a pot for Travel, and use the Virtual Card as my “express transit” card in iOS. money comes directly from my Transit pot when I get a train.
you could pay for groceries directly with your Grocery card.
or if you’re out somewhere with and want to give yourself a limited budget, you could use the VCard to do that (maybe going for drinks and using the card as your budget for the night).
Not hundreds of use cases for sure, and needs other features to have any purpose, but I think there is some value in it
Interesting. I suppose I was suggesting one version of Plus as it is now. And one version that’s identical except with the addition of insurance. But it feels like it’s a theological objection, rather than a simple “I’m being forced to buy insurance when I don’t want it” one. Which is okay - we can see in the poll above that lots of folk aren’t going for Plus because they object to a paywall in principle.
I also find this interesting because, on a personal level, I object much more strongly to children’s accounts being part of Plus. In my mind, there are a distinct and separate proposition and, while they might offer significant value to those who have kids, I think packaging them in Plus is significantly worse than insurance - because I don’t have children and can’t opt out.
In the improbable circumstance of having to chose to pray to the god of ‘insurance bundled with your bank account’ or the god of ‘buy your own damn insurance’, I’d choose the latter (whether or not children’s cards were included with deity #2) .
My thinking on Children’s cards was really that it has a lot in common with the most requested additional feature - assign a virtual card to a pot. A little more customisation on top of that, issue a physical card and you’ve got a new offering. The only per-user cost here would seem to be the cost of issuing cards(?).
Insurance on the other hand is simply a question of Monzo doing a good deal with an insurance provider (surely tough in the current climate!), aggregating the risk to the whole plustomer base to an effective per-user fee. There’s no money for Monzo to make here - its just a question of how much of the premium fee they are willing to give to an insurer in return for the feature of bundled insurance.
I do pay for travel insurance, and I will pay for a debit card for my children when they’re old enough. But I’d only consider paying Monzo for the latter, because I want to chose insurance that suits me.
Trying to imagine a position where I need neither service, I imagine that some theoretical chunk of my fee offsetting Monzo performing their core business (offering innovative banking features) would sit better with me than subsidising the travel insurance of others with no benefit to me or to Monzo.
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Anarchist
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Just to say, you can reorder connected accounts now
But I would note that Revolut have bundled this into their ‘premium’ (and also ‘metal’) tiers.
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