Pay direct debits from savings pots!

You should be able to pay direct debits from savings pots as well as normal pots. Would be very helpful!

They’re held by third parties and need a day to get the money once requested. Since that money arrives in the afternoon I can’t see how that would work

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Basically what @Rat_au_van said.

Though, tbh I’m not sure why Monzo don’t allow instant withdrawals from savings pots, when they do allow us to receive BACS payments a day early. It’s not like we can cancel the withdrawal, so the money is guaranteed to hit the account the next working day.

However, even if Monzo did allow instant withdrawals from a savings pot, I’m not sure about allowing direct debits to be paid from them. I’m sure there would be people who wouldn’t put a £10 buffer (the minimum amount required in a savings pot) in the pot and would then complain that their bill pot is being closed every month when the direct debit happens.

Yea they could allow instant payments like when you get your pay a day early. Or also they notify you of direct debits a few days in advance, so could request the withdrawal from the savings account when they notify you of the upcoming payment.

Why would it be very helpful?

You’d just wipe out any potential interest because you’re withdrawing money each month wouldn’t you? You’re best using a standard pot for bills and leaving savings untouched.

Easy access savings pots aren’t very useful for long term savings goals. You’re better off using stocks and shares savings for longer term investment. For those of us who use easy access savings pots to keep some short term savings in, to earn some low interest on (rather than it just sitting in a current account), it would be useful to be able to pay direct debits from that too. Rather than having to withdraw every time, or put it aside after a pay check, or have it eat out of our monthly budget. If you’re using an easy access savings pot for the interest then that’s not the smartest option cause it’s pretty low to begin with. Taking out a bit every month for direct debits really won’t make much difference. So yeah it would be very helpful.

Of course it would be helpful. Say you’re paid on the 10th and your rent comes out via Direct Debit on the 26th the funds would have been interest bearing until then

Unfortunately the savings pots are a bit antiquated in needing a day’s notice and a minimum £10.00 deposit. You can get better rates of interest in other current accounts where you can set up the direct debit there

Your bills money surely can’t make much interest in such a short space of time can they? Wouldn’t you rather have segregation of savings vs committed spend?

Then as you mentioned you can put your savings into shares or longer term investments. This would be far more beneficial than the pennies you would make with Monzo?

I do see your point if you want to keep all of your money within the app, but if you kept your long term savings inherently segregated from any current account (as I do) it would be a good to be able to have set aside bills money (and indeed money you don’t even need for any given week) be interest bearing, with the added functionality of automated payments out of it.

For me it’s just further slickness and reward for budgeting, which is what the app should be about. At present I use my second TSB account to fulfil this very purpose, it results in about 50p in interest but it requires little effort to do it.

With interest rates as they are, I get your point but I don’t sniff at any penny. If you could do this, it would encourage me to keep all my monthly salary with Monzo pay day to pay day (the rates would have to be better though :wink: ) . Hope this helps!

Now that the rates are much better and with Instant Access Savings pots available, I think it’d be great to allow Direct debits/ Scheduled withdrawals from Savings pots as well.

Unfortunately Monzo see savings pots as promoting saving. Not for paying bills etc

Your best bet is to schedule a withdrawal from your savings pot to your direct debit pot the day before it’s due to take place.

Your best bet is to schedule a withdrawal from your savings pot

Is that possible now? I don’t think it is. It would be a great feature tbh.

+1 to this. Partner and I are wanting to set up a joint account with most money in an instant access savings pot. There’s nothing preventing us from moving the money around manually ahead of each direct debit payment, so the lack of the feature is just an inconvenience for the sake of inconvenience.

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I think the point is to separate regular pots from savings pots.

They’ve got you between a rock and a hard place, discouraging you to keep your day to day money in the savings pots so as not to have to pay interest.

Clever, I suppose. But really transparent too.

Yeah, it’s a common response I see here of “They’re trying to discourage day to day spending from pots which are for saving.” No, they’re trying to get away with not paying interest they don’t have to. If they want to be upfront and say that, fine, but I’d rather people not be presented as a benevolent act to protect us from ourselves.

All you end up doing with this is financially penalising people who don’t actively shuffle money around from instant access savings to bill pots moments ahead of every minor transaction.

Hell, there’s an argument that this should just extend to the account itself. I could constantly have every penny in savings, and move a few quid over whenever I fancy a coffee, but am unlikely to do so. But I’ll be financially worse off than the person who does.

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Rent is almost the biggest outgoing spend on the whole. Only if I could set up a direct debit from savings pots, I would not lose out on the interest. :frowning:

Anyway, for the others who are waiting for this, I have a workaround - I’ve setup third party savings pots and setup scheduled deposits every payday and scheduled withdrawals just 2 days before the direct debits.

Messy but works. As long as Monzo doesn’t get a whiff of this and removes it too. :smiling_face_with_tear: