I’ve just been looking again at Monzo Plus. I’ve been a subscriber before but cancelled because I don’t need most features, and those I do want aren’t essential.
All I really want is Advanced Roundups, Custom Categories, and Virtual Cards - providing money does go direct from a pot and not first moved from a pot to the main balance. In fact I won’t need virtual cards if I can specify the pot to take from.
These are all in-app features with no connection to a third party service. I would happily £1 per month or £10 per year for this.
Anyone else on a free account (or considering downgrading to one) and thinking this would be a good idea?
I would like a version of plus which was limited to the software enhancements (i.e. strip away the things like the plus card, the interest, the extra cash withdrawal/deposit benefits, etc).
But if they did something like this I think it’s probably unlikely they’d go as low as £1/month. £2-3/month seems to me to be more likely.
All I really want is Advanced Roundups, Custom Categories, and Virtual Cards.
I don’t think so. I think you could build a bank focussing on core banking features and giving people better control of their overall finances, charge for it, and lots of people would pay. I personally dislike the melange of additional stuff in Plus and Premium, and the recent focus on things like cashback, as it all distracts from making their core product better; pushes them ever further from making a “Financial Control Center”. And of course it’s especially irksome that we don’t have either of the above two basic features I want on the main account I actually use, all these many years later, when if just some small portion of the development effort that was put into all that other crud had been spent making the core product better. Humph.
I remember when Monzo put these software features behind a paywall. Left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.
I hope they’ll change their offerings in the future. Virtual Cards are free with Starling, packaged accounts are unarguably better value for money with Nationwide and Virgin Money.
(And the new app is rotten).
But there are loads of things I still like about Monzo, so I’ll probably still be here, as a Monzo customer, hoping for these features for years to come.
And I think maybe we’ve hit the problem with the concept. Everyone will want to keep and dispose of different things in any watered down product.
I think it’s difficult to see a cohesive product that sits on a lower tier than Plus now. To be honest Plus already feels a lot like a load of relatively random features lumped together (probably because that’s what it is) but I guess the ‘control over your money and budget’ theme is just enough for it to be product.
Maybe if Plus had way more features there’d be a better way to split it into two separate things at different price points, right now I don’t see it
A product which is only the software enhancements seems to me considerably more cohesive than software enhancements + holographic card + extra interest + extra free cash withdrawals + cashback on international transfers + a collection of retailer offers.
The funny thing is that I have the metal card and I don’t use it; my wallet has space for an id and one card, so the joint card wins out as it’s where 95% of the money goes in and out of .
If they thought they could make more money, they would be doing it. Diluting the offering probably isn’t going to do that, especially even in this thread people are wanting different things for their 40p a month that they are willing to pay.
I do mean all the app features. And I think that value is subjective. But I also think there’s a large sub-market heavily aligned around features and not around external company benefits. But there are others who want some hodge-podge of those - I see people wanting the various insurances most often, likely trained to by their experience of legacy banks. But IMHO there’s a feature-only sub-offering. And perhaps enough people want features that they could eventually even charge more for that! (assuming more features are added to it alone).
Forgot to note that there was a survey that went around 2-3 few months ago which demonstrated that Monzo is at least exploring the idea of a £3/month option…
How is getting more free account holders to upgrade to a paying product bad?
Maybe some Plus subscribers would downgrade, but then Monzo pay out less to third parties such as to insurance companies whose services aren’t needed by all subscribers.
Have you got anything substantive to prove your claim that it would be bad or are you just expressing a random opinion without validation?
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