Monzo Plus - what would you like to see?

Monzo Chat Monzo Plus
421

FYI I love everything you guys are doing and wish I could use my Monzo as my main account however for the reasons below I’m doing to remain with Lloyd’s until the features can be matched, purely because they save me money. The moment I can get closely equivalent features for a similar price I will immediately switch to #FullMonzo

Its great you’re adding new features, and I’m sure these will be good for some however for me the most important features (and reason my main account is with Lloyd’s) are:

  • Phone Insurance

  • AA Breakdown Cover

  • £300 fee free overdraft

Travel insurance is okay but the fact that my bank replaces a lost phone and comes out to fix my car for £19/mo is worth every penny.

I would be happy paying a one off fee for a card with a custom style or picture (say £20) but £6/mo for a different colour and travel insurance doesn’t really seem like something I’m saving any money on.

Equivalent AA cover directly from AA as well as phone insurance is far more expensive without using Lloyd’s and as such £19 saves me money.

Considering that a Monzo account only works on a phone maybe simplify the process of registering the device by saying “cover the device your Monzo app is live on” and then read the unique device ID in app? This would save time calling and giving new IMEI and would be very ‘Monzo’, just as your password-less sign in is.

The issue isn’t how much money you’re charging as such, it’s with how much the end user will feel that they’ll immediately benefit from.

I hope this helps.

Dan

422

Maybe.

Maybe not!

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423

Hi everyone! :wave:

First of all, thanks to everyone who’s taken the time to give us your feedback on the launch of Monzo Plus, both here and in the previous thread when we first trialled the idea. We really do read it all.

As always, we’re really blown away by your reaction here. Some of your feedback may make for difficult reading, but we know it’s coming from a real passion to help make Monzo great. And your feedback will always be a huge part of that. As the ads currently running up and down the country say: you make Monzo, Monzo :hot_coral_heart:

So we’d like to go through the feedback we’re hearing from you, and address some of the concerns.

Clearing up what we’re offering with Monzo Plus

Firstly we’d like to clarify what Monzo Plus currently is, since some of you have said it’s not 100% clear. (We’re updating the original blog post to make it clearer too). For £6 a month - or £3 for early birds - you’ll get:

  • Access to add-ons for other features you might be interested in, like:
    • Travel insurance (£4 extra/month)
    • Travel money (£3 extra/month) - withdraw up to £400 for free every 30 days abroad, and access to emergency cash if you lose your card
  • An exclusive Monzo Plus card - in one of three colours: Midnight Sky, Lagoon Blue or classic Hot Coral
  • A custom Monzo.me username
  • Access to exclusive Monzo Plus events to meet the team and give us your feedback in person (for early birds)

So, what have we heard from you so far?

You’ve told us you don’t think Monzo Plus currently offers good value for money, and isn’t a good deal vs. other similar bank offers

The majority of your feedback has been to do with the pricing and the benefits of Monzo Plus, and that’s fair. Asking for you to pay for something when we’ve usually offered as much as we can for free is new territory for us too, which is why we’ve come to you to learn more.

Upon reflection, it seems that one of the mistakes we’ve made in this project is not to paint a clear picture of what the larger vision for Monzo Plus looks like. Things like:

  • What other extras we’ll offer in the future, and that these will be priced very competitively
  • How it’ll all fit together
  • How we get from this early release to a product that is competitive with the best bundled accounts out there

I’ve asked @jonas to share some thoughts on this in this thread if he has some time later today.

In the meantime, some people will be interested in paying the discounted rate of £3/month to try this out and to work with us on realising our vision for Monzo Plus. Others won’t, and that is totally fine, too.

You’re concerned that people paying for Monzo Plus will get priority treatment or we’ll listen to their feedback more…

One of the perks of Monzo Plus for early birds is access to events where you can give us feedback. But they’re specific to making Monzo Plus bigger and better. We’ll always want to hear general feedback from everyone - however they use Monzo! And our regular events aren’t going anywhere :slightly_smiling_face:

You’ve told us that you’d like to see other benefits included with Monzo Plus

Thanks to everyone who’s suggested extra benefits or Monzo Plus add-ons. Some of your ideas so far include:

  • Reduced subscriptions with other services
  • Airport lounge access
  • Discounts with retailers
  • Access to higher interest rates
  • Rewards and special offers
  • Other types of insurance

We can’t promise we’ll build everything here, but we’ll definitely look into as much as we can. We’ll look at what we can definitely commit to adding in 2019 and we’ll share that with you next week

Some of you have asked why we’ve launched this before having all the answers, or why you should have to pay to help us figure these things out.

Those are fair questions. It’s always been in our spirit to launch early and learn quickly. And we can learn more by doing things out in the open with your direct involvement. That means it can be a bit more of a painful experience, but we think it’s the right thing to do, and we’ll end up with a better product.

It’s also why we’re halving the price of Monzo Plus for the early adopters. We want you to get involved and help us make sure that it’s an absolute no-brainer to pay for. And if you think it’s not worth paying for yet, that’s fine too.

Still having trouble joining the waitlist?

We’re sorry that some of you had trouble joining the Monzo Plus waitlist. We’ve added a link to the bottom of monzo.com/plus when you visit that page on your phone that’ll take you straight there if you can’t see the option in the app.

Thanks again for all your feedback, and please do keep it coming. We’ll keep the thread open as long as things remain civil (thanks to everyone for keeping it that way so far), and be back with news and updates as we go.

We’re also planning a follow-up blog post next week with a little more of the overall vision for Monzo Plus. We haven’t done much of that so far, and it’s important to understand the overall vision behind Monzo Plus, especially for those of you who are investors. Stay tuned! :eyes:

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424

What about those of us who have their middle name in the link!? I don’t use it (or have it on my card) and/or want it in the link. I don’t see why I should have to pay to change this. :frowning:

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425

@thom_horne i’d speak to COps. It’s been Monzo’s policy since I can remember that you can change your monzo.me handle at any time to a sensible derivative of your name.

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426

Can you confirm if the emergency cash is subject to an additional 5% fee on top of the £3 monthly charge?

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427

Thanks for adding information on add-on costs. I won’t be able to make a proper assessment of value until details of more add-ons are provided, but for illustrative purpose if I assume you were able to provide mobile insurance and breakdown cover for a similar cost (£4/month each) that would be an appealing collective cost for these types of insurance (£12/month).

But the problem is the £6/month base cost of Monzo plus would take the overall cost (£18/month) into unappealing territory.

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428

Has it been clarified what the contract terms are?

Like is it £6 a month for 12 months? If you’re going away can you up it to £9 for Travel Money access for one month then revert to £6 afterwards? Or is it then £9 a month for the remainder of the 12 months?

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429

I would argue this should be part of the core offering, with the 5% fee I suppose

Surely this should be part of the marketplace model.

430

Monzo will remove middle names no prob, just message them using in app chat.

431

I’ll give it a go, I was told last time I asked on here that it’d be a feature eventually. :wink:

432

So, £10 JUST for travel insurance then. I think you just helped kill the entire concept for many. Vastly overpriced.

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433

£10 a month… £120 a year… I can get travel insurance for what… £25 or so for a year? This can’t be right…

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434

Technically… it’s £48 a year (for the insurance)… but obviously… you need to have plus initially so £120 is then correct.

Still poor compared to RBS… Pay £16 a month… covers the Wife and me and we get breakdown/mobile phone cover etc and some other stuff (plus 2% cash back on stuff)

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435

So technically it’s £120 but thanks… :roll_eyes:

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436

I should have added the sarcastic warning… I was trying… (not very hard) to be funny… :slight_smile:

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437

yeah £3 per month for the option to change your card colour is pretty lame! Like you @xstex , i’m in the north too, so won’t be able to benefit from going into a Monzo office. Obviously people are going to go crazy for the new card colours. I must admit I love the Midnight sky colour, but i’m not going to waste £3 a month to have it. I think what would be a great option is to have an option to purchase a new card colour. I get it costs Monzo to produce and send the card so why not make this possible instead of having to sign up to plus?

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438

I like to plan/simulate.

My perfect add-on would be a financial goals / planning / coaching module.
What would a financial advisor tell me to do?

I would love to have a easily interactible environment (kind of like a mini-tableau) for sand boxing my own fin-goals. e.g. ‘if I got rid of this subscription, did this and that, then…profit!..:upside_down_face:’

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439

That’s as been mentioned is already £10 just for Travel insurance and different Debit Card colour. You guys don’t think it is hugely overpriced?

This morning when I heard that you starting Monzo+ I was thinking about switch totally to Monzo with my wife in Joint account. But there after I read what you actually offer right now, and that post above just confirmed that you’re not even close to the competitors yet.
For £5 more a month I have right now European Breakdown and Mobile phone insurance included, for family.
General Monzo is great for some things. For other you’re still behind unfortunately. And at this point the families like mine probably do not consider switch. I enjoy some features in Monzo, but my main account stay with other bank right now.

One of the posts said that you don’t want to be like EA with microtransactions. But actually you are at this moment. I have to pay for access to be able pay more for things I would like to have?

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440

I really think that the Monzo Plus core offering should be abandoned even at the cost of increasing the ad ons slightly.