Fantastic forum fam!
Itās your favourite time of the week
Things are speeding along at a furious pace here at Monzo Towers!(and by Monzo Towers, I mean London, Cardiff, Vegas, and every house, apartment, farm, castle, or other abode that is inhabited by one of our many remote workers! Collectively that is Monzo Towers, trademark pending except not really. Itās like Alton Towers but with more coral and less rollercoasters. So nothing like it.)
srsly tho the pace is unreal
Monzo Plus is slowly becoming a real thing, with a few tests going out here and there. Weāre cracking on with what we are building this year, and you can now CASS a Joint Account with your old bank over to a shiny Monzo Joint Account, which is something our Joint Account users had been crying out for! Definitely makes life easier.
Andā¦we just launched an MVP of the first 100 Business Accounts too!
As mentioned in the above blog post, it was clear to us that Business Accounts were something that you overwhelmingly wanted, and who are we to let our loyal HotCoralists (i think i just invented this word) down?
So we wanted to do something special for yāall so you can ask the questions and get the answers all about it.
Jack is one of our COps (Customer Operations) folks here at Monzo and heās working on our brand new Business Banking proposition! Ask him all the questions about it!
Letās learn about Jack.
Jack joined us in January 2018 and has worked on many things - heās been an Activity Lead for COps, heās assisted with our Vegas project, and now he is getting properly stuck in to Business Banking and learning how we can build a world-class customer support system for businesses, just as we do for current account users already.
Fun Fact About Jack:
āI can quote pretty much all of the Gavin & Stacey Christmas Specialā
His favourite thing about working at Monzo?
āWorking with so many amazing people and the feeling that weāre building something that really could change the worldā
Alright folks! Letās get down to business Ask your questions, and Jack will answer them!
Is it possible to use the API to make payments from a Business Account?
Iāve just arrived in the Monzo community, my interest piqued by the Monzo Business Bank Account with API announcement in the press. The documentation doesnāt make it clear how to make payments using the API. I saw a question from 3 years ago about using the API to make bank to bank payments. Could I have an update, thanks.
I miss him after leaving!
Something Iāve always wanted to know is how was you very happy on a Monday morning? When I had my coffee and fruit before shift you were always a joy to be around.
I have been a Monzo user for nearly 3 years now and I love the way things are rapidly changing, for the better. My question for you Jack is how do you see you the growth of a Monzo in Europe over the next 3/5 years?
Also one more question, I split most my time between The U.K and Germany, and N26 is becoming quite popular. What I particularly like about N26 is their easy in app investment features, can we expect to see anything similar from Monzo that is similar to they way that Moneybox or N26 operates when it comes to smart investments?
Hey Jack! Do you know what happened between Uncle Bryn and Jason on that fishing trip?
I am pretty excited for business accounts, but as a sole trader Iām entitled to using my personal account - are there features planned for the account that are gonna make me want/need to invest in the business account? Any details that you can reveal at this very early stage in the process?
Firstly Iām so excited about the business accounts - i canāt wait to get one. Two questions: I spend so much time logging expenses and receipts from my business accounts to Quickbooks. Will there be a quick way to sync it up in Monzo?
Second question: are you planning to release savings pots for business like the 1% Investec pot for current account users? Please say yes. Another bane of my existence is navigating money between my business account, business savings account, personal account and personal savings (and credit cards). It would be great to have everything in one place.
Iām very excited to see what Monzo do with business accounts. Do you know at this early stage if business accounts will work in a browser? I just donāt know if I could do all my business banking in an app.
what does it feel like working at Monzo at the moment? Does it feel like the pace is accelerating?
the picture of the business account home page (monzo.com/business) doesnāt have the pulse graph on it. Are you nuking it for business?!
Iāve noticed that the words āappā or āmobileā donāt feature on your copy about business accounts. Are you thinking out of the (mobile app) box?!
when thinking business have you come up with super cool ideas that might benefit personal accounts too? Are you going to try to keep them feature aligned as much as possible?
Oooh, this is a really tough question itās not necessarily a physical product, but itās a ātech productā neverthelessā¦ Iām actually really looking forward to iOS 13 this year. Itās been a while since thereās been a big, āwowā software update from Apple, and I reckon theyāre thinking big this year - so WWDC this June will be an interesting one!
Iām a big music fan (and Iāve got a broad taste, too) - so youāll usually find me pumping music into my ears on my commute! That always gets me in a great mood. I get a lot of energy from the people around me at Monzo - just knowing Iām working with some top people usually puts me in a great mood!
I try to give myself plenty of time at home to have breakfast at home rather than catching it at the office, that way Iām fully awake before I get in! I think that probably helps too
Your first question is a great one. Our mission is to make money work for everyone, so this is definitely something weād like to explore in the future I donāt think this can be done by just serving UK customers, so I think itād be really cool for us to find ways to offer Monzo to users in other countries in the future.
Smart investments are interesting too - and something we know that a lot of our users are super keen to see. Iām not the best placed person to talk about this, sadly, so I canāt give too much more context here! You should definitely check out this blog post, though - it tells you a little more about this and other cool things weāve got in the works!
None of us will ever know! Although I heard that Uncle Bryn and Jason were going into business together, and have since registered interest in opening a business account at Open a Business Bank Account Online | Monzo
On your second question, this is something weāre thinking really seriously about. Weāre trying not to take a āone size fits allā approach to business banking, but rather trying to understand loads of different types of businesses and build something (or maybe a set of somethings!) that suits everyoneās needs.
This is a little different to our current account offering - different businesses have wildly different needs. At this early stage in the process, weāre trying to figure out what those needs are, and then weāll figure out how to build something that suits a broad spectrum of business users.
So, as an example - you as a sole trader most likely wonāt need all the bells and whistles that a large limited company will need. But, hopefully we have other features that would make doing business simple for you!
Hey Sonia! Thanks so much
We hear you! Weāre working on all sorts of integrations, so weāll definitely bear this in mind whilst weāre building them. We want to become the financial hub of your business - and to do that, we need to integrate seamlessly with all the different tools you use to run your business. Our goal is to make your financial admin as simple and seamless as possible, and hopefully get you a couple extra hours back every day!
On your second question - this is really interesting too! We donāt support this just yet, but itās something weāre keen to explore!
Hey Jack! We donāt have this available just yet - but weāre definitely planning on supporting this in the future!
Ah, great question! For me, itāll simply be hearing stories of how business accounts on Monzo have made things better for that business. In a previous role, I spent a lot of time talking with customers about their current accounts, and the best conversations are always the ones where people tell us how much Monzo has changed their relationship with money! For us to deliver this with business accounts would be the ultimate goal.
With businesses, I think thereās a slight nuance to this. We obviously want businesses to love their accounts, but what does this actually mean from a businessā perspective? I think it means a couple of things:
Itās super easy to pay suppliers and get paid by customers, and thereās really zero hassle to the day-to-day banking operation
Business owners say that theyāre understanding their money in ways they might not have before
Monzo Business Accounts become an enabler in some way; it enables businesses to do things theyāve previously just not been able to do, either because those things didnāt exist or it was way too complicated.
I hope thatās not too vague
Weāre starting small, and starting simple. We think that the accounts weāve offered to the first 100 are great business bank accounts already (though not perfect!) but we think thereās a lot we can learn in this time too. We wanted to start simply, and so Ā£5/month was a good place for us to start.
As we learn more about these businesses, and listen to their feedback about the use of the account, weāll explore how pricing might work differently in the future. Weāre absolutely not set in stone on this; itās simply a good starting point.
Listening to the needs of the different types of businesses in this first 100 will play a really important part here. As we learn what types of businesses need what features, weāll also build a pricing structure that makes sense for these different businesses. Weāll start from Ā£5/month, in itās most simple form, but weāll likely revise this as we learn more about what works for our users and for us!
Ah, this question is right up my street! In short, yes. Businesses will also have 24/7 support! Weāre in the very early stages of working out how this happens (at the moment, all the business banking questions are being answered by the Business Banking team ourselves) - so bear with us! But providing swift, helpful, personal service to business users is something thatās very important to us
Hi Peter! Thanks for all the questions!
On your first - itās super busy! Weāre seeing lots of new faces, but everyone is still super lovely and super smart. We work with some pretty outstanding people! Thereās a real sense of moving quickly and I think weāre all pretty excited about the things weāre working on
We havenāt decided on the Pulse Graph yet - but stay tuned!
Great third question! Our approach here is to take lots of what we have already, and then take feedback, do research and figure out what that offering could look like for businesses. Right now - that means our first business bank accounts are app only, but weāre not closed off here. Thoughts are very welcome!
We have a pretty cross-functional team here, and we talk a lot! We love sharing ideas between teams, so yes - if we find something from a business account that might make sense for our personal account, weād definitely consider how we could build that.
Thanks so much to everyone for your questions! This has been lots of fun
)
So many questions!
