Out of genuine interest, did the Monzo app crash at the very instance when you tapped on the blue ‘Open joint account’ button?
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At this point I wouldn’t ever bother to carry on engaging, circular thread of the year this one.
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No it asked who i wanted the account with and then did the next page and it crashed then vanished. when my partner presses it my name dont even show in her list
It’s Jan 1st!
Give it a few weeks a better one will come up soon.
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Thanks for the feedback. When I tapped on the very same button earlier today, as a test, I got a different result (noting we already have a JA)
So one of these scenarios now applies:
- the other party in the Joint Account application doesn’t actually meet the required criteria
- at the point of an applying, Monzo re-checks the first JA applicant to see if the required criteria is still met
- some bizarre filtering is at hand, kicking off ‘x-percent’ of JA applications, which in itself is a little sinister but could explain the random-ness of recent JA rejections
But as everyone has previously said, the factual reason why you don’t qualify is seems to be down to a risk assessment by Monzo, derived using parameters that none of the non-monzo community members here are party to, unfortunately. Not the greatest start to 2023, but I wish you the best of luck finding an alternative, suitable Joint account solution.
EDIT: Decisive context reduced to probable context
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Slow down initiated, next step closure 
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Do we know that though?
This sounds (to me at least) that the variable is Monzo - i.e. they have to do something. Maybe it’s them changing their risk appetite? Maybe it’s them fixing their tech stack. But unless I’ve missed it, I’m not sure we do know that it’s a risk assessment thing.
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Applying for a JA is a bit weird with Monzo. The answer for me was allowing to be a no because I don’t have the friends thing turned on.
But it says we can’t offer you one, and there’s only the continue button to press.
So I press that and it offers me the opportunity to use shared tabs. Fair enough, but I press ‘no thanks.’ And end up back on the previous screen with only one option.
Can’t get out of the loop without going down the shared tabs route.
It’s a bit buggy.
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Yeah the loop is very buggy. I have no choice but to close everything to get out of it.
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It does to me too, but from Captain Bitter it might be true, it might not be.
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Please people, don’t do that!
As @ndrw previously pointed out, the unobtanium ‘blue button’ for a JA application was available in his account. It was also available to me (ignoring the fact we already have a JA, but I’m trying to help to establish a pattern)
So it is available to some Monzo users (even users who already have JA’s)
The news (taken at face value) of a personal account user attempting to open a JA with another Monzo user, having the unobtanium button shown, and then it crashes-and-burns when tapped on seems very weird.
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I totally understand all of that. I’m not trying to claim otherwise or say that joint accounts are blanket unavailable.
The reason I challenged this isn’t to be awkward but to say that there are logically other possibilities. I’m not making claims about their relative likelihood, but from the information we have it could be due to a risk assessment. But it could equally be due to an unspecified technical limitation (I dunno, early accounts have too much data therefore the app would be unresponsive more often), servicing costs (e.g. 100 extra joint accounts needs a Head of Widgets), or because they are about to move all joint accounts to a different sort code and different card design so want to limit numbers before then.
I’m not saying that any of these are correct or even likely. I’m just saying that it’s possible that the answer isn’t just risk appetite or regulatory reasons. There might be other business decisions that are driving it.
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It’s fine to assume bitterness 
but I’ve no need to lie.
Appreciate the challenge. For total context you missed out an important run-on when subsequently commenting twice on my original post. Missing bit: “… derived using parameters that none of the non-monzo community members here are party to, unfortunately.”
Then following on from:
… I’ll rewind to:
There seems to be an underlying, yet still unknown, something going on resulting in the greatest mystery here.
Blimey, the minutiae of a fintech community forum can get seriously deep 
Hopefully the posts and counter-posts here can eventually help us all to understand what’s going on with JA’s and the way forward to explaining to forum members what the issues are.
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Something’s broken and nobody at Monzo can be bothered to fix it is what I’m reading between the lines here.
It fits with how joint accounts are treated in general at Monzo with their feature incompatibility too. I guess joint accounts still aren’t a priority then…
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Great thread 10/10 for popcorn munching abilities.
Seriously though this was a good read - it really
exposes the vagueness and complexity around JA offering criteria that seem to exist.
My hope for 2023 is that Monzo get a consistent approach here. I appreciate that there may be many reasons why things might change and be different but even a consistant way of saying “not right now and we can’t say why due to regulatory reasons” might be a start.
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I’ve no desire to open a Joint Account, but thought I’d go through the process to provide an additional data point here.
For context:
- I would consider my use of Monzo as being my ‘main account’ (money in each month / direct debits, card payments, transfers etc. out)
- Have an obsessive number of pots
- Have several savings pots (Shawbrook etc) with reasonable amounts saved
- Have Plus
- Am an investor
- Have Flex
- Have a mortgage
- Have a clean credit file and consider myself ‘low risk’ (and before the snarky comments or questioning, I’m comfortable I’m all over this and check my three files each month)
- My only negative may be my low use of credit as I pay off balances in full on my credit card
- I use Split Bills and Shared Tabs regularly with someone who would be a prime candidate for a joint account (housemate / friend)
- Have Payments with Friends enabled
- Have never used crypto
- Am never overdrawn
- And generally, consider myself to have well-managed finances, which are - tbh, and a result of being an accountant - rather boring
I went through the ‘Apply for Joint Account’ via help and got the ‘Can’t offer this at this time’ screen as per the above.
Now, I don’t really mind that I’m not being offered one, but I can’t for the life of me fathom why and what could have triggered this.
I’m an accountant, my finances and credit are whiter than white, but it strikes me as bizarre.
I now await the ‘well, you ARE a risk in Monzo’s eyes’ comments to start in earnest… 
But, believe me when I say I’m at a loss as to what I would need to not have done to make myself ineligible 
Could this actually be a glitch, or perhaps there is some obscure criteria or limit on opening new accounts 
Mystery, and unfortunate for those who are trying to open one with a real need to.
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Just to follow up on 
, the ONLY thing that I can think of is I had a fraud on my Monzo account a few years ago (card details were compromised somehow - possibly a website breach?) resulting in a dodgy couple of transactions for about £200 which is documented here:
TL:DR - chargeback refused; I challenged; I won. Monzo will have likely got this back from the merchant so no net loss to them.
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We don’t know this at all, this is just speculation. They could have operational reasons, they could be running some sort of a/b test, they could have regulatory reasons.
Thanks for the context, I think along with other posts this puts to bed the unjustified assumptions about risk profile etc. (I really think people should stop saying this, it’s not helpful and likely to trigger flame wars, which some here seem to positively look forward to, which is a shame).
Could be as simple as they don’t want to focus on it and don’t want to give it to plus/premium customers as then they’ll complain that they don’t have plus/premium features. But we don’t know, and I do feel Monzo should tell their customers.
It would be nice if Monzo fixed this at some point by opening it up again or at least fixing the comms.
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