šŸ¦ Open Banking at Monzo - Ask Me Anything!

Hmm, Iā€™m not totally sure about this. But I suspect merchants will realise this is happening pretty quickly and theyā€™ll have to choose a single cashback provider or segment things more carefully.

Now that we have our standardised Open Banking API I think it will be much easier for other banks to include us in their account aggregation offerings. Iā€™m not sure if they would be worried about doing that, as some big banks see Monzo as a competitor. I havenā€™t heard from many legacy banks yet, but maybe soon!

This is Europe-wide legislation (EU Payment Services Directive 2), so in principle all European banks should be providing an Open Banking offering!

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I think all payment accounts are in scope ā€“ so current accounts & credit cards. Not something I have looked into as Monzo doesnā€™t offer its own credit cards. Not 100% sure on this though. Savings, mortgages, loans etc are not really in scope at the moment.

Yes - me too! And weā€™re talking to Open Banking about this.

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Really cool that you are doing this @kieranmch :+1:

My question is, what does Monzo get from this?

To clarify; Monzo wants to be the centre of my financial universe. So it wants to tell me that Iā€™m paying too much for a service, and offer me a better, or cheaper (or both) service.

Monzo doesnā€™t know, for example, how much I pay for energy, because I donā€™t pay for it through my Monzo account. If I connect another account via open banking, would Monzo see how much Iā€™m paying for everything? Is that the point for Monzo, to monetise information?

Iā€™ve just realised, that when I say ā€˜Monzoā€™ above, I mean any open banking provider.

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hi Kieran
Thanks for the reply.
My understanding of open banking is that is was effectively an open playing field
Halifax already allow aggregation to all of their large main competitors.
Whether they consider you as competition isnā€™t relevant.

How does adding a bank (or other organisation) work if they donā€™t currently offer the option of a particular organisation? Do you need to contact them or do they need to contact you or is there an incantation? (to have it working both ways).
Presumably some sort of dialogue has to occur. Can you expand on the process?
Thanks.

The other bank need to approach Monzo and we will set them up with access. What they put in their product is entirely up to them, and they wonā€™t include Monzo in their product if they donā€™t believe itā€™s in their interest to :slightly_smiling_face:

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@kieranmch Iā€™m trying to set-up an Open Banking feed in FreeAgent for my Monzo personal account but unfortunately Monzo is not showing in their list.

Now that Open Banking is here, are there any plans to link with FreeAgent for Personal accounts (business accounts are connected) or is it FreeAgent who need to talk to Monzo ?

I thought the idea of open banking was to allow all financial institutions and accounting provided etc to be able to connect and talk to each other

Thanks for your time

It is, but it is down to the other company to ask Monzo to be enabled

So Monzo have to make the data available, but organisations do not have to use others data

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Thank you, I understand better now and I will email FreeAgent to see if they can possibly add Monzo in their future plans

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Thanks
Why not approach them and then you can do a swap, you use their API, they use yoursā€¦win/winā€¦
(Or is it going to be a case of who cracks first?)

The 4 time per day limit is a bit of a bummer. Feels like an unnecessary restriction now that weā€™re, like, living in the future 'n stuff. Hopefully the OB standard evolves quickly - canā€™t expect legacy to get all webhookable without a sharp stick.

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For me, it not just about what the banks get from this. Itā€™s about what they lose if you choose another bankā€™s ā€œportalā€ to access and manage your banking services.

Itā€™s a bit like Yahoo Mail and Hotmail in the early 2000s. Everyone logged onto their webmail, and Yahoo and Hotmail made a lot of money by showing users advertising while they access their mail. A lot of this advertising was based on data mining.

Then Apple launched the iPhone, and Yahoo Mail and Hotmail users started instead accessing their mail through the iPhone Mail app. (This is often referred to as disintermediation). Suddenly, nobody was seeing the web advertising through which these services traditionally made their money, and as a result, their profits nosedived.

Traditional banks make a lot of money by cross-selling products to their online customers. If those customers are no longer accessing their banking directly through them, they become disintermediated too. They can no longer sell those products as effectively, and profits nosedive. In this case, the danger is even greater, because unlike Appleā€™s Mail app, which didnā€™t try to sell you anything, the bank through which youā€™re accessing your banking will try to sell you their own products, which means youā€™re more likely to begin switching your banking.

That, as I understand it, is why all the banks (and some non-banks) are racing to offer their customers the best portal.

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My pleasure. Please reach me on asa@creditladder.co.uk.

Absolutely nothing to do with work butā€¦

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Even 4 a day would be better than current. No idea what webhooks are but it sounds promising. Thanks for taking the time to reply.

Hi @kieranmch, thanks again for taking the time to reply. Native is even better!

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To overly simplify things, instead of a service asking Monzo for information every so often to update their info, they instead sign up to a webhook that notifies them whenever Monzo has something new to share.

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Ah gotcha. Thanks for the explanation

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