If the user is to initiate each payment, I’d still prefer that initiation to be done in the app of the mortgage provider, so that an “are you really sure?” warning can be displayed if the limit is getting close.
But then again I’ve never been one for Monzo simply transferring functionality into their app without iterating any improvement, just so that it’s ‘done in Monzo’.
The improvement in my eyes is that I’m not sending money to a 3rd party and losing interest. It stays in my Monzo pot earning interest. Then, if the payments could be made more frequently by Monzo, there would be a savings on the mortgage interest as well. That’s calculated daily for most - so an early payment is saving money. Monzo also adds the roundup feature into things meaning the payments can be made to be higher with little effort.
So just doing it in Monzo is an improvement from my point of view.
Couldn’t you work out your average monthly round up amount and set that as the scheduled payment to your mortgage provider? My average monthly round up figure is only about £30. That way you can set and forget about it with one click like you want to be able to do, and its all in Monzo.
Also, I don’t think we’re being naysayers. Its interesting to explore the reasons why a particular idea may or may not make sense to implement.
More broadly, I think a case could maybe be made for allowing you to select a percentage of a pot balance as the amount for a scheduled payment, rather than a specific monetary value. But even that has pretty sizable risks associated with it. One day you put aside a bunch of money in the wrong pot and suddenly its paid to someone without any means of retrieval.
I’m already making a fixed overpayment, and I know I can do things manually various other ways. I just like the idea of skimming an extra amount off the top of
my daily spending in a frictionless way. I have my roundups at 5x and two years worth is £1.7k for me. If cashback was incorporated as well then the amounts could be a fair bit higher. This would make a pretty good impact on mortgages/savings/debt repayment and I wouldn’t really have noticed it.
I’m not talking about instant payments to my mortgage by the way. Once a week/fortnight it could prompt the user “you have £30 spare in pot X , want to auto transfer to account X?” User hits yes and authorises it.
Anyway it doesn’t seem like the idea is getting any support so let’s just leave it here.
That could be interesting, but might better suit Monzo loans, overdrafts or flex.
I could see a notification being useful in a scenario where you’re overdrawn while having spare money in a pot, and Monzo prompts you to transfer the exact amount to clear the balance. Or a scenario where you’re utilising 80% of your flex, and Monzo recognising that it would benefit your credit score to use spare pot money to make a payment against flex. Or if you have a Monzo loan, a similar notification could work to avoid late payment fees or something.
But I feel like mortgages are a bit different. Monzo have put in place the overpayment calculator to nudge you to think about setting aside money for overpayments. And maybe that calculator could assess your pot balances and provides tailored recommendations. But everybody’s situation is different and making overpayments with spare cash is not in everyone’s best interest.