Please keep the prepaid cards

[Nizar]

I hate using my main card for all my spendigs. So every month when I get my salary, I load a certain amount into the card for daily spending and use my main account for rent, bills and big spendings.
Once Monzo launches the current accounts I would like to still have that flexibility. Maybe have the coral prepaid card and the deep blue one gor the current account.

[Rika (Scarlet)]

I have some bad news for you.

@tom

We’re not planning to support the prepaid card in the UK for the long term - it adds a lot of operational complexity without much benefit. We’ll try to offer a basic bank account which should be available to more-or-less everyone in the UK, so it seems like a pretty good replacement for the prepaid card.

Other than the hard separation, is there any reason why smarter budgeting with something like the upcoming Targets feature wouldn’t meet your needs?

Targets

Hi there, First of all apologies for not sharing too much design stuff lately. We’ve been focused working on ways to optimise user on-boarding: the period that goes from the day you sign up to the waiting list to the magic moment when you get to love Mondo and use it for all your daily spending. So, as you are all already Mondo-lovers all that work doesn’t really matter to you Let’s try to compensate our radio silence with a meaty and very very wordy sneak peek. This is an update that i…

Theoretically, you could also just continue to use your Monzo card as you do now but with all the features of a the full current account while still keeping bills in another account if that’s what you require.

I know that there are reasons to want to keep things separate but it would be great to understand yours.

[Nizar]

Well it is more about being paranoid than anything else. Like having all your eggs in one basket. It is not really about budgeting.

[Rika (Scarlet)]

Ah, that makes sense.

Well, there’s no reason why you couldn’t run two accounts, one with Monzo and one elsewhere. It would even be easier to do that with a Monzo current account as with connections to the major banking networks, you could freely move money backwards and forwards without the concept of a top up or the many different workarounds.

[Nizar]

It would be great if one could have more than one account with but I guess the app won’t be able to manage more than one account.

[JamesBell (james_e_bell)]

Thats exactly how I use my monzo card - still in 2 minds about whether I will switch full when the monzo current account launches or whether I will continue in the same way (transfer in only my discretionary spend budget)

[PMH (Peter)]

I suppose the added security of Monzo might be helpful here?

So, in the way that the usual bank behaviour is to not really give you real-time spend data / allow you to easily manage whether your card is frozen or not - :mondo: really handles that sort of thing very well. A lot of fraud seems to rely on the huge lag in information being passed down to the person whose money it actually is.

[MikeB]

I asked my other half. Her main benefits of pre paid are (1) limits discretionary spending to a subset of current account and (2) the peace of mind that if you lose it /its stolen then in the period of time before you realise its gone (when as it were someone is on a contactless spending spree on Oxford Street) your total losses are limited to what was on the card.

So if die is already cast some way of addressing these issues in a different way would be a good thing for a customer-centric bank (pace can’t please them all all of the time).

Mike

[alexchamberlain]

Found this posting a similar idea to the Ideas forum. I also think it would be great to keep the prepaid cards; it’s great for traveling, untrusted websites/shops and (I imagine) it would be a great way to give kids money too.

[bluefroguk (Martyn Thomas)]

The prepaid cards are a huge deal for my friends and me - many of my friends joined Monzo because it’s a ‘simple’ prepaid card to aid their budgeting.

Having a separation between my main income account (bank) and my spending (Monzo) is a huge help.

I’d happily join the current account if the pre-paid account also existed to aid with budgeting/separation.

Please keep the pre-paid card, and have ability to have more than one card per account (one current and one prepaid)

[coffeemadman (Jonathon 🏳️‍🌈)]

I would be surprised if they did, given the added complexities that they won’t need once the current account is launched.

If I were you I’d just treat it the same - just transfer the money you want to spend over to your Monzo account and… spend. It’s not really different to now.

[simonb]

Sorry Martyn - we won’t be keeping the prepaid card past the end of this year. It adds too much operational complexity for very little benefit and the program costs a lot to run.

There’s absolutely nothing to stop you from treating the current account in the same way as a prepaid card though - ie, not having your salary paid into it, not having any direct debits, and transferring over money from another current account for spending.

[Avishai (Marta)]

@bluefroguk

Having a separation between my main income account (bank) and my spending (Monzo) is a huge help.

I’d happily join the current account if the pre-paid account also existed to aid with budgeting/separation.

Well, there are no requirements to have monzo current account opened. In reality, all minuses of prepaid card go away, like downtimes caused by third party companies, prepaid card sometimes rejected and lack of FSCS cover and you get some bonuses like bank transfers (which you may or may not use, up to you).

What aspect of current account could stop you from using Monzo’s current account in the same way that you use prepaid card now? Even tops ups will remain as functionality, if I remember correctly. So you can have your current account in ‘boring’ bank with your income, and current account with Monzo for spending, same thing really, right?

Having more than one card, virtual cards and spare backups had been discussed in various topics though - but all of them in context of having them on current account eventually.

I’m on that other side , prepaid card cannot go away fast enough, because debit card and current account is so much more functional, not to mention doing all processing in house (I trust Monzo to do a better job than third party companies in terms of bugs and downtimes).

[Mbirch101 (Matt birch)]

Will mondo be issuing new cards and the previous card will stop working all together? Does anyone have a date by when this will happen?

[alexs (Alex Sherwood)]

@Mbirch101

Will mondo be issuing new cards and the previous card will stop working all together?

It sounds like that’s what will happen -

Winding down of prepay card

Hi Duncan - that’s correct. We will indeed be phasing out the prepaid scheme completely. The current accounts are built on a different system - and one that we’ve built completely ourselves from the ground up, whereas the current prepaid scheme operates with partners. The current accounts are designed to replace the prepaid scheme, and not operate simultaneously.

@Mbirch101

Does anyone have a date by when this will happen?

No we don’t, you can of course be sure that Monzo will give users who don’t want to switch plenty of notice in advance.

[BobT (Bob)]

Prepay cards will be phased out by the end of the year, by which time we should all be offered current accounts.

[chrisgilbert42 (ChrisG)]

I use my current accounts like this at the moment:

1. My salary goes into one account, all bills by direct debit go out of this account.
2. There’s a standing order the day after pay day into me and my wife’s joint spending account.
3. We top up Monzo from the spending account each month and do most of the spending on that.

Having a Monzo current account will replace our spending account, not the salary and bills account. Separating spending from fixed bills makes it a LOT easier to budget, and not overspend each month.

It also means I can leave that debit card at home and never use it online or in shops. Which means if someone steals my spending card for any reason, my mortgage and bills carry on getting paid just the same. I’d recommend the same approach to anyone, it’s easy to set up and will save you a lot of hassle.

[Rika (Scarlet)]

No date set yet.

It will be a migration over time, you do not have to immediately accept the offer but we will progressively push it more and more until that currently undetermined cutoff date. You will receive plenty of notice.

[AJayStone (Ammie Johnstone)]

Absolutely agree, but not only for budgeting. I love the Monzo card for travelling, load up with your set budget then you get the best MasterCard exchange rate that beats most of the cash exchange rates, which I am never organised to pre arrange anyway!!

[amelia (Amelia Ikeda)]

I feel like the usage style of the prepaid card can definitely be solved with the “Money Pots” (separate accounts) mentioned in a sneak peek not too long ago