Our Plans to Close the Monzo Prepaid Cards

I’d ask for a show of hands for who didn’t read about Monzo before signing up, but I think it’s quite clear.

lol

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To be fair signing up for things without fully understanding them is pretty common. When I first heard about monzo it was sold to me as a ‘new bank’ and was pretty disappointed it appeared to be just a prepay card :stuck_out_tongue:

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You’d see my hand up :raised_hand:

Someone demonstrated the app to me and I thought ‘Great! A prepaid card with cool app and useful features.’

In three days I had a card, free foreign ATM withdrawals, and instant notifications. And that was all I wanted.

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And that’s still available on the current account!

With the exception of free at the moment withdrawals, which changed independently of the current account, because it was unsustainable.

Whilst other Challengers like Starling still offer free foreign ATM withdrawals, their user base is relatively small - when they reach 500K users, I doubt they will be able to maintain free withdrawals either.

A card, instant notifications, a real-time balance, and no accidental overdraft still exists!

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I know! I’ve got one. I was doubtful at first, but it’s working fine for me.

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This is what I have with Monzo. My card is anonymous - the first couple of hundred sign ups to the current account preview received a nameless MasterCard (ironically I would personally prefer one with my name on it for car hire etc.) I also have mobile app, instant notifications and the Mastercard rate when abroad!

Monzo have stated previously that they would like to introduce an option of having a nameless card again in future:

To be honest, it doesn’t really go into detail about anything with clear figures, it’s all just examples. “Wouldn’t it be great?” - yes it would but the devil is in the detail. I can put money NOW in an ISA at the end of the month and I can get it back whenever I want.

Look, I’m not against this and I genuinely want a better way of banking, and who knows, maybe Monzo will be it, but for now I just don’t see it.
Like many people here, and stop suggesting that we’re all a bunch of idiots that didn’t knew where this was going and didn’t read before singing up, what got me hooked was what I said previously: ability to load without fees, use it without concern of card fraud and a cool app.

I wish you all the best and I hope you make it.

For what it’s worth, I’ll be leaving. I always knew Monzo wanted to be a full featured bank, but didn’t realise that meant also closing the pre-paid card. The app has been asking me to upgrade for a while, but didn’t mention my account would be closed in two months if I didn’t (and still doesnt). The app tells me I need to go through a credit check to upgrade and I need to give you a copy of my passport and video? Don’t remember doing that when initially signing up and don’t want to now.

Was interesting to see use of the world ‘cult’ upthread to describe some of the defence of the company here (even if not by staff members) - that’s exactly how it looks to me, and I’ll be sticking with my existing current account because I don’t see how Monzo is any better than that.

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Not intending that, only trying to share an overview which might help answer your question:

I agree, there’s not a lot of specifics, but that’s the direction their aiming for - to simplify this process with partners rather than constantly trying to upsell you their own products

I don’t this this is the case. I opened a Monzo current account in July, and to this day ClearScore does not notice this in my credit report.

You only need a credit check if you choose to apply for an overdraft with Monzo.

Edit: Not quite right - see two posts below

Then the app is giving me the wrong message - without that I would upgrade. Clearscore only reports credit checks through one of the 3 major agencies anyway

We run a ‘soft’ search of your credit file for identity and verification purposes when upgrading you to the Monzo current account. This kind of search is not visible to lenders and doesn’t impact your credit file; it’s the same kind of search that comparison websites run when they want to give you quotes.

The only time we’d run a ‘hard’ search (one visible to other lenders that can affect your credit rating) would be if you were to request a credit product, such as our overdraft.

Hope that helps :slightly_smiling_face:

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Someone was asking ‘what makes monzo different to another bank’ and I hadn’t really thought about it - beyond things like instant notification (which is a killer feature right now but other banks could in theory provide it if they wanted to) it’s connection.

Some companies I deal with are just entities that take money off me and provide a service… there’s no real feedback and if they do something I don’t like my option is just leave. That describes a legacy bank completely. Think British Gas vs Bulb. Both provide energy, Bulb feel more personal… Same with my ISP… I stick with them because I can talk to the people that run the network, and occasionally have a beer with them. That’s worth the extra.

The forum sometimes feels like it’s full of upset people sometimes but then with almost all other banks there wouldn’t be anywhere to be upset… they’d just have to shout at the walls or swear at a minimum wage worker in bangalore. Even First Direct, who are rated as good customer service (and in general they are), when I had an issue said ‘Nothing we can do’ and that was the end of the conversation…

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I don’t understand why parents don’t let their children get a current account… plenty of banks offer them now with full debit cards.

The nationwide one is completely fee free as well, even abroad.

Not strictly true. I’m reasonably certain that the circumstances in which transactions would still go through on the CA even if you don’t have the full amount are the same circumstances in which transactions on the pre-paid will go through if you don’t have the full amount.

My own pre-paid account went into negative balance at one point due to SWT being rubbish. I topped it back up up to a positive balance as soon as I noticed - within hours.

Granted, I seen a number of ‘refunds’ from SWT in my feed and I’d therefore been expecting them to claim the money later, but the same would apply for any circumstance I can think of in which a transaction could go through and possibly give you a negative balance - you’re very likely to be aware it might happen and looking out for it.

Outside of exceptional circumstances, unless you’ve applied for an overdraft, you won’t go into a negative balance. The transactions will be rejected.

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I think what is probably the source of this is all the banks advertising their switching offers with the proviso that “in order to claim the switching bonus, you must switch entirely to us and close your previous account”. No-one advertises that “you can open a current account with us and still keep your old one”, so it’s easy to see how people keep hearing the former and then think in applies to all accounts and not just in specific circumstances.

The other thing is the term, “current account”. It ‘reads’ as singular - that is ‘current’ implies the one you have right now. “I have an account with X. I’ve opened an account with Y. X was my current account, but now I’ve opened Y this is my current account, which means X is no longer current.” You could say it’s a logical fallacy, of sorts. We all know that the actual leap is from ‘current account’ to ‘current accounts’, but (especially given the advertising mentioned in the previous paragraph) that’s not necessarily intuitive to people in general.

I speak from personal experience, too. It wasn’t until I was on the phone to the CASS that I realised I could switch without closing my old account, as they asked me if I wanted to close it or not (I did, because it was a condition of my switching bonus). That was really the first time I realised I could have more accounts if I wished without closing others.

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I’ve been using Monzo for a year now and I am sorry to say that I will not be upgrading to the current account.
Do not get me wrong, it has been great and not let me down once! However, the application requires the latest iOS and I will not be forced into upgrading and slowing down my phone or shelling out £1k for a new one just so I can save a few £££ on my next holiday. I know it is not completely your fault, but perhaps you can consider making the app work with older versions of iOS.

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Erm, it only needs iOS 10 or above and I’m pretty sure new phones don’t cost that much.

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I think they may be referring to Apple slowing down older phones to save battery, so it is true that a newer model will cost a lot, even if a new phone does not have to if you don’t care about the model.

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That’s a very good point. (Although you don’t need to spend half that much).

Monzo are ‘building the bank of the future.’ It seems that the future excludes the large proportion of the population who don’t own compatible devices. This is another store in the quiver of those asking for web access to their account, I think.

As an aside, does anyone know if Monzo have made any commitments to maintaining compatibility with devices which are currently on the borderline of compatibility?

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