Reducing the cost of debit card top ups (part II)

You can add money to your Monzo account in a few ways.

You can set up a standing order or bank transfer from your traditional bank account, or give your Monzo account details to your employer and get your salary paid straight in.

We also know that it’s useful to be able to top-up your account in an emergency, from another debit card or through Apple or Android Pay.

However, it costs Monzo money when you add money to your account in this way, so we’ve been doing some work to try to reduce these costs to help us build Monzo into a sustainable business.

Our user researcher Samantha recently shared some of the early approaches we’ve been testing, along with a lot more context on why we’re doing this and the kinds of options we’re considering.

As an update, I wanted to share one of the decisions we’ve made based on the results of some of these tests:

For new users who sign up to Monzo, we’ve put a £100 limit on amount you can top-up in one go. There isn’t a limit on the total amount you can add.

If you’re an existing Monzo users that signed up before 28th February of this year, nothing will change for you.

We’ve found that introducing this limit has no negative effect on the amount of money new customers add to their accounts - instead, it encourages them to use bank transfers or set up their salaries. It also hasn’t made new customers less likely to keep using Monzo so we’re confident that we’ve found a way to reduce these costs, without providing a worse experience.

Thanks! Let me know if you have any questions.

J

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Hi Jordan,

If it helps, I prefer to top up using my card because it saves going into 2 different apps to do it. I have been waiting for the switching service to move my salary over so I am sure once that has been launched you will see fewer people need to top up using a card.

Alex

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I personally like the second suggestion. Tipping feels unnatural for a bank, and the second suggestion will prompt customers enough to give them thought and provides enough friction, but not too much, to do a bank transfer at least.

Spoiler Alert:

You only have to use one app to complete a bank transfer :yum:

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Exactly this, just waiting on CASS.

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Haha!! So true, so true.

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Maybe have an emergency option where the account holder is willing to pay the fee to get a larger sum transferred.

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Charging a fee for card payments is now illegal in EU law. Also from everything I know about Monzo they wouldn’t want to pass this cost directly onto users.

@JordanFish my employer uses SAP but they don’t allow for me to change to Monzo to have my salary paid in (have raised this but no clear response and HR simply says it needs to be in the system for them to be able to process with payroll) hence waiting for CASS as well!

Have you told your company they need to refresh their list of soft codes from bacs?

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Hi Matt, did ask why it’s not possible to both my HR and SAP directly but no straight answer and that I should ‘take it up with my bank’ :unamused: Suspect it’s just people that don’t want to investigate

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Good tip though, might suggest that yet would still be easier to do it all in one go with a switch (direct debits etc)

I suspect you’re still going to run into issues further down the line, to my knowledge the CASS will forward transfers on for a period of time but also send notices to companies who currently pay you or their banks to update their details to the new one where it seems they might run into further difficulties here if monzo isn’t in their database.

Although someone from monzo may be able to clarify here.

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Think it’s 13 months. I’d hope they would have updated their bank list by then!

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I believe this is now at least 3 years, and potentially indefinitely:

The new rules will see all customers entitled to a MINIMUM redirection period of three years. However, the rules will also stipulate that there should be a minimum of 13 months between the last stray payment and the date the redirection period ends.

As a result, customers who continue to have payments made to their old accounts will find their redirection period is extended until 13 months after the payment is diverted to the new account.

Source

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Thanks @nanos @Rat_au_van & @m8tt !

Had a chat with friends in Bath who hadn’t heard of Monzo yet :no_mouth:

When I mentioned switching wasn’t yet possible they mentioned that they’d probably be to lazy to switch over everything themselves, and although I transfer my salary straight into Monzo once I get it I suspect the not having CASS also creates the barrier that my lazy ( :rofl: ) friends just don’t bother to use it as a main account (regardless of all of the other features besides the spending abroad which they thought were all cool) I guess at the moment you just have pioneers that do not mind being hands on with their financial household

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