Monzo ‘Premium’ should be coming in financial year 2021. So sayeth the rumour mill, and the 2020 Annual Report…
“We plan to roll out another market leading premium banking product in FY2021”
What would people want to see from a Premium offering? What features would make you spend £10-£15 a month? Will this be a third tier account, or a gateway to something different entirely (Hot Coral credit card, anyone?).
My own wish-list is below. Quick covering note:
Debate around paywalling features: Personally I’d see SOME of these features rolled out to ALL tiers of accounts eventually (perhaps Premium/Plus users would simply get ‘early access’ to certain elements below) but I’d rather avoid that rabbit-hole for now and keep this feature-focussed.
Expectation management: Most of the below won’t happen, and that’s fine. Some are purposefully outlandish. I pay £13 for Nationwide’s FlexPlus and get a minority of the below, so that’s the bar for my expectations… but hopefully Monzo can work some of their magic!
The List: Feel free to vote (no vote limit) or add your own wish-list below in comments.
Metal card (love or loathe, had to get this out the way first!)
Early Bird access to events & offers (gigs, sporting events)
Earn Cashback
Better offers (gym / netflix / spotify etc.)
Dark Mode
‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ options on big purchases
Interest free overdrafts up to £X.
Earn more interest - I mention the NW Flex Plus… Until recently you could offset the £13 monthly fee by about £6 through interest. They abolished the interest, and frankly I never got near to having enough money to benefit anyway, but it was a good aspirational target to have. Tricky in the climate, I know.
More Third Party Integration (e.g. invest in stocks & shares through a partner at £0 / reduced fee)
Ability to manually add third party cards / balances where integration hasn’t happened yet (the balance wouldn’t update/refresh of course but it would be workaround until proper integration happens. The idea being you get a FULL picture of your finances, which I’d find useful. Student Finance / investments would be covered too.
Aggregator / Financial history (similar to Emma etc.) showing your total balance of all accounts over time (whispers… Pulse Graph 2.0)
Unlimited / automated ‘financial health MOT’ using insights from credit score, savings goals, Pot targets, spending habits & budgetary targets.
Monzo Insights - complementing the MOT, the odd ‘Did you know, 30% of your monthly spending takes places on Saturdays after 7pm’ (etc.) could be useful. I’d have this as a toggle.
Monthly vote for a Monzo charity donation. I’ve stolen Waitrose’ green token idea (sue me).
Monzo Desktop/Web - with a dashboard and pre-built templates to complement the Google Sheets live data.
Something else completely (share below).
0voters
I’d personally prefer a modular approach, where things like phone insurance could be purchased as add-ons, but I can see the difficulties that may pose to Monzo in any commercial discussions. Again, keen to keep this feature-focussed rather than worry about the implementation.
My something else is to do with the Ability to manually add third party cards / balances suggestion:
I’d like Monzo to track my balance for accounts I haven’t linked. So if Monzo knows that my balance in that account, then it would monitor deposits and withdrawals via Monzo to that account to keep the balance up to date.
I’d also like an API to Zoopla or someone to pull in the current value of my property.
My something else is cards for children - ie separate pot, debit card for child, controlled spending and maybe an app/website for them to manage their money in limited ways (less limited as time goes on…).
Scrolling through that list, nothing jumps out and I’m not even sure I can think of anything that would make me part with another £10 on top of Plus. Plus I only really pay for because of google sheets anyway.
I don’t want some cowboy fixing my iPhone where I have to send it off and be without it for 4 days or something. Gadget insurance… Meh. Travel insurance would be handy, but is it worth paying for Plus+ for that?
Maybe it will appear and something will wow me but I can’t even think what that could be!
I want something innovative that nobody else does. I’m tired of all the same rubbish that every bank does, so aspiring to be more like them is a no from me.
Based on that I don’t know what I want - so I’ll let Monzo (who’ve been doing a pretty good job so far) think of how they can improve things and will eagerly await the next thing I never knew I needed.
I’ve voted for cashback, but I’m not sure that it can ever be meaningful. Interchange is (I think) 0.2% so even if Monzo passed all of that on, it wouldn’t be massive amounts.
I think the problem here is that the free offering from Monzo is too good.
The basic Monzo offering is immeasurably better than the old world banks we’ve all left behind. I’d have paid for it, or something like it - but they really did lead the charge among fintechs to define what we should expect for free.
Persuading people to part with their money for additional features is an uphill struggle, because everything you need is there, for free. What we’re willing to pay for varies widely between users.
I’d like Monzo to track my balance for accounts I haven’t linked. So if Monzo knows that my balance in that account, then it would monitor deposits and withdrawals via Monzo to that account to keep the balance up to date.
^ Excellent augmentation.
“I’d also like an API to Zoopla or someone to pull in the current value of my property”
This is great. Ultimately I’d love to have a full picture of my financial health in the app; house value, student debt, pensions, investments etc. which is why I’ve also voted for Web App / Dashboard (as I think you’d need that to show the full impact of changes over time.)
I definitely don’t envy the team responsible for Premium! As we’ve seen with the aborted Plus 1.0 it’s not easy to get this right. Being able to offset the monthly fee with higher interest would probably tempt more people.
I don’t think I’d pay extra for those things. Some should just happen e.g. dark mode rather than paywalling it. I’d like Monzo to come up with something I didn’t know I needed from a bank or banking services
I’d like to see a lot of what is set out above and my “something else” would be a Monzo credit card with benefits only open to Premium customers - similar to how Barclays/NatWest/HSBC (or Amex) do it.
I think I may be in the minority here in that the only outgoings which go through my account are credit card payments (and other DDs/SOs) - I hardly ever use my debit card, as I get nothing for that, whereas I get good rewards on my credit cards.
Clearly it would be a big step for them to move from overdrafts and loans to credit cards, but the model is out there for good service and good rewards meaning people pay for premium cards…and if they come with other whizzy current account / other banking features, that could be a game changer?
Edit: I know there are other threads talking specifically about the best fintech credit cards - I would just love Monzo to do one!
Initially I had ‘Credit Card’ as a poll option - maybe should’ve kept but lots of the features behave similarly to what a credit card offers: Cashback; Buy Now, Pay Later; Interest Free Overdraft; Monzo Points, Access to Spaces, Early Bird Events etc.
Similar to you, I mainly use my credit card for spending. It’s a battle between wanting better insights into my spending (which Monzo brings, especially with custom categories in Plus) and the perks I get with CC.
Would love Monzo to end that battle, and incentivise me to do all my spending with them!
I think, technically, there is a big difference between an overdraft and a credit card in terms of how it affects a customer though - I’ve not been overdrawn since my student days!
“Buy now pay later” sounds exactly like a credit card - sorry, completely missed your point!
Exactly this! 100% agree.
I’ve ended up using Curve to get this - although it doesn’t work with Amex.
Also, as someone pointed out on another thread when I mentioned it, you skip the normal legal protections of a credit card by using Curve, but they have their own sort of protection so - for me and my spending patterns - it doesn’t cause an issue. Big spends still go on Amex.
What if it doesn’t cover your expensive new flagship phone?
How would you feel about subsidising the cover of someone else’s flagship phone if you have the most basic Android phone?
Dan’s hit the nail on the head here RE the issue with all packaged current accounts… one size fits all rarely gives everyone the same value.
For me the way forward is a menu of options (with a corresponding price ratchet). We, as consumers of insurance (particularly) need to focus on value more than price.
I’ve nearly been had a few times by terrible travel policies attached to banking / payment products before - usually they exclude the bits I buy it for.
