New Monzo Sort Code

04-00-03 definitely exists in the wild -

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The purist in me wants 04-00-03 for business, 04-00-04 to 06 as personal, 07 for joint and 08 in case of savings etc.

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Ooo does this mean I have a business sort code for my personal current account :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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07 and 08 don’t allow all features of a normal checking account

Yet - should be pretty easy to change that though.

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The 03 sortcode is just used across the board. Including personal accounts.

But yes I agree. Should’ve been the way from the get go :sweat_smile:

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Yes, I believe it is!

The rules are that you have to be connected and “switched on” to accept payments with at least one of the payment schemes to keep your listing in the EISCD (Extended Industry Sort Code Directory), I believe. Therefore, sometimes banks will just switch on a single scheme to keep a code live, especially if they are currently just reserving it for future use. You often see CHAPS used to do this.

Industry participants often have a bit of a lag in recognising when new payment schemes are made available for a sort code, due to them not always using an up-to-date copy of the EISCD, but it is even more of a problem if your sort code is brand new - as in never used for any payment scheme before. Some systems may not recognise it as a “valid” sort code. Generally, the sort code is at least recognised as valid if at least one payment scheme is switched on, which means systems shouldn’t block it’s use. When other payment schemes then start being used, participants more readily update compared to if the code is completely new. Seemingly anyway!

I do agree that some separation by product type at the beginning would probably have been a good idea. I’m sure people would have probably found a different sort code for joint accounts useful, for example, as it would be immediately obvious which account details were their personal and which joint. Ditto for business. I suspect that, with all the issues in the very beginning with merchants not recognising the original sort code, Monzo opted not to bring in more until later to allow merchants time to update their databases to avoid acceptance issues. But it’s a bit of a shame.

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The only sort codes available to the public at present are 04-00-04 and 04-00-03 (as we’ve exhausted the account numbers available on 04).

The other sort codes are mostly used for testing and stuff :smirk:

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Given that theres only 6 million customers plus the deleted accounts and they have exhausted 04 must mean it’s a lot less than the 9,999,999 possible.

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That’s what I’d guessed, really.
It’s still exciting to think otherwise though!

Perhaps I’m just reading too much into your :smirk: emoji…

Classic @Dan5, always teasing the community!

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This makes me sad because it is such a great sort code. But congratulations!

Out of interest, can account numbers from closed accounts eventually be reused – maybe after a certain number of years? Or are they gone forever?

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Just found on a quick Google that a bank gave the same sort and account to another customer :face_with_peeking_eye:

It adds that recycling account numbers is “common practice due to a limit on the amount of numbers available. In this case, the account number had not been used for eight years”.

The checking that the name matches that now exists would have alerted them

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