I’d get rid of the top up personally. Just my opinion don’t attack me.
I just worry regular Joe will join up and the account will feel a bit… Ryanair…ATM fee after this amount…top fee after this amount…energy advert in the feed etc. Just get rid of top ups…
And also what’s this I read about new faster payments that take two seconds…maybe I read it about starling…what’s that…I wasn’t even sure…
My problem here isn’t that you need to charge… but you could have said this a long time ago.
For what seems like weeks we’ve been telling people ‘don’t worry topups are coming, you’ll be able to use it the same way as prepay’. There was plenty of opportunity for Monzo to come out and say ‘actually, we’d prefer if if people got used to not using topups’, but instead they waited until today to post this… so here on this forum we’ve been telling people to wait and it’ll be fine, which is (a) not true, as there are likely to be charges, and (b) bad for Monzo.
Faster Payments to Monzo from Lloyd’s take just a few seconds today!
Its usually instant formme to to be honest. I don’t remember I time I had to wait!
Monzo shouldn’t have brought them back full stop.
People were starting to cope without them and they are not really needed with sort codes and account numbers. I have not transferred by salary over yet (as Monzo doesn’t offer the separation of bills and day to day spending yet so my legacy account is a bills account) so have a £100 standing order per week going to Monzo. If I need more, I log into RBS app and within seconds send money to Monzo.
They are still needed to top up with EU debit cards as long as no IBAN exists for SEPA
Like a couple of others have mentioned I had no idea before that topping up via Debit card costs Monzo a ton of money and I used to do a ton of small top-ups whenever I needed it, with the bulk in another CA. Idk how much of this is common sense but being on this forum has made me assume the general public is just immensely clued up on fintech and every aspect of banking, investments, etc.
I’m sure a lot of people don’t really understand how banks work- we put money into a hole in the wall, it puts some magical data into our card, and we use the card to get cold hard cash again 
I’m an idiot. Sue me. And I really appreciate that Monzo has tried to explain their features, included us in decision-making, and the reasoning behind why they choose to implement something or what they are planning, and it’s not unintelligible to anyone who isn’t in the industry.
A lot of people aren’t just sticking with Monzo because it’s the best or only option, but because they feel personally attached to the brand and the idea of a subtle guilt trip eg “this will cost Monzo £x. Would you like to use FP instead to help us keep our costs low?” and a redirect option. It would defo help reduce the amount of debit card top ups. I’m ambivalent about monzo.me since I don’t have anyone I use it with and it isn’t an issue for me.
Got to say, I like the allowance feature that you’ve given to international ATM fees. This would work really well. If you could make an easy way of tracking your allowances of debit card top ups and ATM fees such as a section in the spending tab with a metre from 0 to 300, for example, that would solve that problem you mentioned. Transparency and simplicity. Keep it up!
It feels to me like we are at the top of a slippery slope with customers paying multiple fees to cover Monzo operating costs and having more and more of Ts & Cs to contend with. Personally I think Monzo should keep it simple and focus on building a business model that covers the cost of doing business. Don’t bring features to market that require new fees and “rules” to govern how much or how often you can use it… Its a fact that whatever Monzo do, the legacy banks can (and will) do, the difference is that they have business models that will allow them to absorb such operating costs. Its great to have Unique Selling Points , but charging for them in this way is not such an attractive proposition for many who are accustomed to free banking.
Hopefully the Monzo marketplace and partnerships with other companies will deliver the sort of benefits needed to offset the need for more charges.
I am assuming (hoping) the recent round of VC funding (71m?) is a vote of significant confidence in the future of Monzo…
Reading this whole thread makes me wonder where the business model really sits?!
Grow grow grow and get bought?
Grow then sell a range of services for various fees?
Charge a monthly account fee?
Some of the comments around the community feel a little like the WHY DOES THIS APP COST £3.99 I WANT IT FOR FREE moan that infests App Stores.
Deliver a quality service for a fair price - job done. We can’t expect everything for free or super low price.
Tom specifically says he doesn’t want this as it would mean Monzo wouldn’t meet it’s ultimate goal
I guess in a way…
Monzo has said they will offer Marketplace functionality with services tailored to you. If you save £250 on your electricity bill by switching (which they handle all for you), they take 10% of that.
I think Monzo implement card top ups and Monzo.me with the help of Stripe. These are not same as debit card payments or direct debits etc… So the cost is because 3rd parties are part of the whole process
Unfortunately we identified the lack of top-ups as being a huge pain point and blocker that was preventing people from upgrading.
The basic aim is that we get everyone to upgrade before we shut down the prepaid. Ideally, we’ll get most people to upgrade before we have to start loudly shouting about the end of prepaid via push notifications, etc. We won’t get everyone to do it, and when that date gets set, and the 2 month period passes, and we approach that final week - customer support is going to be incredibly difficult if there’s still a huge amount of people who haven’t upgraded. That’s the scenario that we’re really trying to avoid.
We actually never intended that top-ups would be completely removed because they are incredibly convenient for a lot of people, but as per the point of this thread - that has to be weighed up against how much they cost us.
In the long term, as more and more people move their salaries to us, it won’t be as necessary, and with Open Banking/PSD2, we may be able to implement a solution that pulls in money from another account that way, at no cost.
I cringed reading the tip screen - “Did we mention you look nice today?”
You could call it an optional fee:
Monzo are charged 5% per top up, do you mind helping us by paying the fee?
Yes, I’ll help out! (£x.xx fee)
No, not this time
(Clicking No leads to a confirmation screen which includes a point that bank transfers are free)
.
Helping people to set up the Standing Order or move to salary may also help - instructions on how to set one up using other banks, a reminder they can set, an estimate of weekly/monthly spending etc.
With PSD2 do you envisage this to be limited to connecting UK accounts and initiating payments between them, or pan European, so also between other country accounts and UK?
Well, PSD2 is an EU directive, so broadly speaking there’s no reason why other countries accounts wouldn’t be part of it.
That was what I thought in principal, but I wondered if us being awkward and using a different currency to most other countries would prove a hurdle
I think the thing is that you could argue that Monzo is providing a Service in the same way that you could argue that deep down, buying a Good or Service is just “moving cash”. I imagine Stripe see it as a Good or Service too as they don’t deal in cash transactions.
Personally, I’ve used Bank Transfers as much as possible, even on the Pre-paid card when you had to wait 2 days because I always knew it cost Monzo money. The only time I did abuse it a bit was when Santander were offering 5% cashback on Android Pay transactions (sorry Monzo)!
If you’re going to charge anyway, now might be the time to let people top-up/monzo.me with Credit Cards. I could see the justification before when you weren’t charging, but that argument sort of goes away now.
It’d be a shame to add this to monzo.me but I don’t see how you can’t, but it then removes another great feature of Monzo. I’ve used this a few times with friends and family who don’t use Internet Banking or don’t know how to make a Faster Payment (surprisingly some of my younger friends as well as the usual Mum factor!). The Bill Splitting also becomes a bit redundant because your friends who aren’t on Monzo will cost you extra money, leaving the bill payer getting gypped!
A broader maybe Foyer topic could be, how are all these companies who’s whole business model revolves around Card Fees, JustEat for example, going to survive when these regulations come in?
A couple of my thoughts, as someone who has realised all along that top-ups cost 
Monzo money and therefore uses bank transfers to fund my account.
I can see why top-ups are viewed as more convenient. For me, now, it is no more complicated than putting my thumbprint on a legacy bank app and sending over money to an account that is already stored. However, the storing of these details is a real pain. Some banks allow bank details to be set up in their app, others require logging on to internet banking, which is (a bit) more of a pain. But it’s hardly the end of the world.
I agree with the opinion expressed above
that the corporate line, repeated here by well-intentioned Monzo champions, has been “top-ups are coming back, you’ll be able to use your Monzo CA in exactly the same way as your pre-pay.”
Now, a day after the option appears in my app you’re talking about charges. This should have been factored in from the beginning of the CA transfer period, marking a difference between the pre-pay, with its reliance on top-ups, and bringing a full-featured CA to market which should not need to rely on the feature at all (no other established bank does).
Finally, the whole language of ‘top-up’ really implies pre-pay and ‘secondary account’. In my opinion, Monzo should be talking about ‘paying in’ rather than ‘topping-up’. Absolutely everyone who has expressed their displeasure at the inability to top-up having transitioned onto a CA is used to this concept as they all have a pre-existing legacy bank account. Bank accounts have funds paid in and, to me, topping-up feels akin to pre-pay mobile phone usage, somewhat poorer, second-rate and cheap (despite costing more!) As long as Monzo offer ‘topping-up’ rather than paying in, feel they are forever selling short their concept as the hub of everyone’s financial life, and shackling it as a ‘secondary’ service to a legacy account.
PS I can’t wait to watch what happens when Starling broach this loss-leader, along with ATM foreign withdrawals, with their users. Both are front and centre selling points and the bank has remained tight-lipped throughout Monzo’s transparency.
tl:dr Call ‘top-ups’ paying in and get your customers to use bank transfers as they are already used to doing with the rest of the banking system.
A lot of people might not know tipping up by debit cards costs you. I bet if you put up a friendly message advising people before they hit “submit”, and letting them know bank transfers cost you nothing, a lot of people would set up transfers. We want you to succeed as much as you do!