Poll: What should Monzo's priority be?

No, I don’t, and no, there isn’t.

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Because you see no value in account aggregation, or you have that covered elsewhere?

I don’t use account aggregation, per se.

Tried Emma a while back, and the now extinct Yolt, I think it was called, but saw no value in the Open Banking connections.

Only aggregation I really use is old fashioned manual spreadsheet :grin:

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Moving Joint Account parity to one side for a moment…

If Monzo allowed (future-dated) manual transactions, which could be reported and were dealt with correctly in terms of reconciliation into the feed, I think I’d be able to drop YNAB completely. Trends is actually a very good thing - at the current feature-set stage too - so it’s really not that far off for our unique workflow. ‘Unique’ because it’s our way of doing our finances.

Each to their own of course.

PS> That and a running balance to match!

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None of the aggregators do it all do they? Whenever they are discussed they seem to be missing this or that and you have to do something else.

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Running balance and a future planning function for the win. :muscle::pray:

I know it sounds crazy, but maybe a few original financial products… Zopa, Chase, Wise… They’ve all got some unique take on savings/investments. Monzo isn’t even in the room at the moment.

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It has already. It’s called Revolut and it’ll be a bank soon too.

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That’s a perfectly serviceable fintech but not the model of a hub that I’d want to see. And their customer service and corporate ethos are both horrible, so it’s a hard pass from me.

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For me a few things, but the one I want the most is below.

an IPad application allowing you to login while still able to login to another device

  • Improved connected account options eg the ability to change the budget catagory while it’s still pending. The account icons change recently was nice :slight_smile:

  • A really outstanding premium account , Something that really stood out from any other bank. For example multi-cover insurance, enhanced savings rates, something “premium”.

  • Better business banking functionality, trends was surprisingly missing. I thought this would’ve worked with the business account (though clearly seperate from personal).

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I’m a US user so there’s a bit of bias showing in my vote. Removing the “beta” label from the US product while it’s in the state that it’s in (account details not accepted by PayPal and certain other major merchants and billers for direct debits, no cheque imaging, instant transfers only available to other Monzo US users, US cards don’t work at certain international ATMs despite displaying the MasterCard logo) was more than a bit of hubris on their part, but now that they’ve decided to do that, they need to really get in there and sort out the issues that still bother many of its users.

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Depends what you want/need. There will always be someone who can point to something that’s missing for their needs. For me there are only a couple of major improvements that I’d like to see which probably apply to all aggregators:

  • Ability to edit/categorise pending transactions. But I understand there are significant technical challenges to this.
  • Ability to connect more savings accounts to aggregators - really requires FCA to expand the scope of open banking.
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Joint accounts getting some love would be great. I’ve had both Plus and Premium but can’t justify them when I’m mainly a JA user.

iPad app is a good shout too.

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I hope that they do, or they’re in bad shape. In an Open Banking world you can always switch to a higher savings rate or a lower loan rate, so you can’t really compete on those as they’re a race to the bottom. The only other option is to own the eyeballs, to be the financial control center / platform for money. Then you have options.

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I agree you can’t compete on rates alone, although if the rest of the package is good you will be able to attract and retain customers as long as you have a decent (even if not market-leading) rate.

There will always be rate-chasing savers who will move everything for an extra 0.01% of interest ruthlessly, but the popularity of things like Monzo Pots indicates that most people won’t bother to do that. Therefore you just need a good overall package to be competitive. However, this is why I do think Monzo need to work on things like international payments and cheque imaging, so they can be a person’s only bank. The current approach of tacitly directing people elsewhere for certain services isn’t sustainable when you need to “own the eyeballs”, as you say, and try to lock the customer in.

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I only have my low value pots with Monzo now. Anything with substance is in a Chase Savings (pot) at 1.5%

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That sort of makes sense to me if the overall impact of a different rate is negligible (because it’s only small amounts, and pots may be easier to manage).

Personally though I don’t really see the appeal of pots. I apportion what my savings are for myself, and all I want from a bank is the best possible rate. I therefore put my savings wherever the best rate is. It’s actually quite good to have the savings “out of sight, out of mind” and segregated in a different bank - so I don’t see them all the time and get tempted to use them. I do a sort of manual bills pot by keeping most of my money in savings and then moving it to my current account just before a bill is due to be paid. When this is your approach, the lack of sort code and account numbers for pots adds a further difficulty as it means paying in and out regularly (to non-Monzo accounts) is more difficult than it needs to be and less flexible. Things like pots which take a day to process a withdrawal (as some Monzo pots do, or at least used to?) also make this difficult. For many use cases, pots are actually less flexible than a traditional savings account, so I really don’t see what makes them appealing other than the fun factor that you can have multiple for different savings purposes.

I think you’ve missed my point. Open Banking means you can still use Monzo without changing anything except where the savings are. And conversely, a company with a better interface can supplant Monzo.

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I understood your point. My point was that you can only use the Monzo interface with Open Banking if you subscribe to Monzo Plus or Monzo Premium (something that a lot of people are just not going to be willing to do, ever). This may well cede the market on the “financial control centre” as a result.

Meanwhile the Monzo current account gets commoditised as you can add it to other apps through Open Banking; also other banks are required for several key functions, so Monzo runs the risk of not being the go-to Open Banking provider and also not the go-to account (because once you have a second account elsewhere “just for cheque imaging and cash”, you may just start using that all the time and Monzo could lose a customer).

These are two huge business risks before even considering “what if somebody comes along with a better app” which is equally possible now that innovation on core app features has slowed due to a focus on monetisation and paid-for features (which, again, the majority of customers are unlikely to ever be willing to pay for).

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Let me be precise, because your second message is what I was saying above, but I thought the first argued something else:

It sounds here like you’re saying that savings rates don’t matter, but they would in a non-zero rate environemtn. A better example is loan rates, which very much do matter today and people definitely do jump to the cheapest deal. So it sounds like you’re discounting the rates and saying that if the overall package is good then they’ll stay. I’m saying the same thing really, with the subtle differece that I think the rates do matter, people will jump, and so the app and its interface are in fact all that matter.


Yeah, this is a hard nut to crack. How do you make money as Monzo if you give everything away for free and the people who actually originate the loans make money instead? I like how they charge for Plus and Premium, and I guess we can only hope that the offering ends up good enought that people do decide to pay. I haven’t lost all hope on that. Things can change. These aren’t the old clunky current accounts of yore that it would have been impossible to charge for. In fact, many did manage to charge via the same bolt-ons as Premium has (insurance, etc.)

This is, indeed, precisely what I am saying. If Monzo don’t win the eyeballs, they’re farked.

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