Scheduled payments silent failure

Help
1

For the second time this year a scheduled payment to my credit card has failed, with money available in the allocated pot. Sequence of events:

  • I get the card statement (around 6th of the month) and schedule a payment for the full credit card amount for the due date (usually 31st / 1st depending on days in the month)
  • I allocate the payment to a “credit card payment” pot
  • I put the full due amount into the pot
  • On the due day the amount is moved out of the pot into the main balance, as expected
  • The outgoing payment appears in the feed in a lighter grey than other outgoing items, and if I click into it, it shows as “Upcoming”, same as payments happening tomorrow.
    Waiting to see what happens today, but last time it just disappeared from the feed next day.

The explanation I was offered last time was that “due to an internal error we stopped making payments to that account… please try again”

Two things

Scheduled payments / standing orders are typically used to pay bills, and they should be set up and forget. If they don’t work there should be a clear and positive notification otherwise a customer is likely left with an unpaid bill, credit default etc

Payment history showed that I’d made 11 payments to my credit card account this morning, of which 2 have failed. That’s an extraordinary error rate and makes me wonder if I should use Monzo as a serious bank or just as a payment card.

Anyone else experienced similar issues?

1 Like
2

Why don’t you use direct debit? Same process. Let the card collect the funds themselves, you’re adding money to the pot the same way.

3

Doesn’t really matter why they don’t use a DD tbf, the fact is there’s clearly some issue which Monzo really need to fix. If a user wants to pay by a SO, they shouldn’t then have the risk of it failing for what appears to be no legit reason at all.

4 Likes
4

I’m not disputing, just curious why doesn’t automate it?

If payment then fails, responsibility is on credit card company and any negative credit file impact can be resolved.

SO can’t do that, as yes it may be monzo fault, but they don’t care less about the credit file impact.

I have next to nothing going through monzo.

5

I could use DD, always pay in full, so would cut out a step at the start of the month.
However, I don’t know that when Monzo break payments to the account whether that only affects SOs or also DDs

6

DD works fine as you’re also covered by the guarantee

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7

Indeed. I happen to pay my CC off in full every month, but if I didn’t and wanted to set the amount and date myself, I think I’m still entitled to a better than 4 in 5 chance of it working and a clear alert if it doesn’t.

Also nothing Monzo have said explains why this account specifically would be affected, so could equally affect something where SO is the only option - rent payments are often SO for example.

8

Sometimes scheduled payments fail because the receiving bank has downtime.

This is definitely a bit of a pain point (for me at least) - I have one to a NatWest account that probably fails a couple of times a year due to NatWest being unavailable.

I only know this is the reason because I work for Monzo and I’m on the overnight team so see when NatWest are down :weary:

4 Likes
9

I think from their perspective they had?

2 Likes
10

That’s possible, though Monzo haven’t offered that as an explanation.

However, the main issue is that it shouldn’t matter how any sort of automated payment fails, but if it fails I should get a very clear, in your face notification. What I actually get is the payment in my feed, only distinguished from a successful payment by the shade of grey.

If you didn’t work for Monzo, how would this look to you as a customer?

1 Like
11

I don’t disagree :smiling_face:

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