In addition to doing all the transaction stuff well - accurate names, locations and categorisation for budgeting and a solid API, since the launch of the CA I’ve started to think about all the ways payments could be made so much easier as well.
Paypal like service
Rather than having to enter card details again and again, it would be great to simply be able to hit “Pay with Monzo” on the merchants website, it would go to a simple oauth one click authentication with the amount and 2 factor authentication for security. If you wanted to pay the merchant again later you could just use google authenticator or SMS code to reverify.
Direct debits, rather than just being pulled from the account could be authorised via a notification with each one authorised as it goes out.
Identity based payments
I should be able to find a person by their name, email or phone number to be able to send them money or request money from them. Instead of checking and checking an entirely arbitrary set of numbers to make sure they’re correct, just see a photo, name and whatever other distinguishing information.
Requested money could appear in my ‘expected’ file so I can see what I expect to have in the future.
Group kitty/crowdfunded payments
I think this has been around a few times on the forum before - but it could completely change being in a shared house since it would remove any risk of other people not paying/reclaiming money and the accounting that goes along with that.
Automatic/rule based/natural language based payments
I’ve seen suggested the idea at the end of the month you can set your account to clear any money above say £500 into a savings pot. Or it could be set to donate 5% of monthly expenditure to charity (assuming there is enough left in the pot).
Also for scheduled payments I’d like to be able to setup “Pay my cleaner £20 every two weeks for 3 months with a reminder every 3 payments” or “Send £100 to Charlie on the last day of each month”, “Request £10 ev thurs from Nina“.
Could there be conditional payments that interact with other APIs? “Pay £10 to Bob if it’s hotter than 10 degrees next Wednesday”
A lot of these things could start off built just as monzo to monzo features, but ideally in time be integrated into the banking system and replace all the current outdated systems we use.