I don’t mind pushing the loan products, but any need for this when buying a monthly train ticket? Am I going to get this every month? 
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I think you can turn these lending notifications off in settings. Depends if you find it annoying, or you don’t think it’s clever enough to recognise you will buy this ticket monthly.
Found the setting and killed them, just find it a bit pushy for people to be nudged into lending products
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Maybe there should be clear options eg. “Not right now” or “Disable all offers” to make it less annoying but still allow them to reach their target customer who might be interested?
I’ve not had any yet but you can’t get worse than the high street banks. I once ended up having an argument about pushy sales tactics over the counter. I just wanted to pay in cash and got the hard sell for credit cards. The kind of sell where you don’t take no for an answer and filibuster people into buying your crap. There’s definitely a fine line between being helpful and being a nuisance.
I hope Monzo can avoid that by being smarter or at the very least make it very easy to ignore.
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IMO loans should not be offered for expenses which are regular/recurring, even high value items like a monthly train ticket. This should be in line with Monzo’s responsible lending policy - for example, I hope we will not see this for mortgage payments.
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It’s even in my account as a scheduled spend, so it’s not unexpected, unless the trigger for that is anything over £100.
But the system should be smart enough to spot the difference between transport/mortgage/bills and say £1,000 on electronics or homeware etc.
Regular spending is not where this should be happening
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I see that, though, equally, if a monthly expense (eg train tickets) can be significantly reduced through purchasing a quarterly or annual ticket, a cheap loan might make sense.
I can’t see how borrowing would work in this case, as you’re already borrowing the mortgage funds.
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But a 15% Loan isn’t cheaper then a interest free loan from your employer for a Season ticket.
This shouldn’t be on by default, and it aimed at the right purchase.
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Of course.
I take your point on default settings (though it shows how far we’ve come - time was we got no say in messaging at all from our banks).
In terms of targeting, customer common-sense should come into play. Monzo is hardly pushing the hard sell here.
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There is a high chance you’re going to need to spend the same amount next month (a lot of people buy their train tickets monthly) and if that’s the case being in a position where you’re still paying off last month’s ticket loan when you’re buying next month’s is really poor budgeting.
Monzo needs to be really really careful – most banks don’t offer short–term lending in addition to their overdraft, instead advertising loans for big ticket items paid back over years – and Monzo is definitely in payday lending territory with terms of three, or six months.
This type of borrowing seems to me to much more of ‘emergency’ spread the cost–type budgeting, rather than thought through and fully costed, like a new kitchen or car would be. There is a danger you’d more likely take a three month loan on a train ticket simply because you’d had a couple of birthdays and a heavy weekend the day before and found yourself ‘a bit short’. This is perilous and could lead into a cycle of debt.
So Monzo really needs to ensure when it surfaces short–term lending, that it’s doing so for the right kind of purchases and to the right kind of person. A train ticket absolutely doesn’t fit these criteria, and I’m left a little disappointed that Monzo seems to be getting sloppy in both it’s ethics and application here.
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This is exactly what Starling did last year (before they were hounded for poor lending practices and stopped pushing them).
I’d imagine (although I could be wrong), that Monzo will be targeting spends of £250 and above (or similar).
Would be much smarter if they could narrow it down into categories that may benefit from spreading the cost (although personally… If someone needs a loan, they can chose to get a loan)…
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