I think it’s the other way around, and the lessons learned from the first attempts at Monzo Plus are why development is no longer about the MVP approach.
There was certainly a lot of care taken with the launch of the current Plus - an MVP approach would’ve likely seen it shoved out last March anyway instead of retooling it following the pandemic.
For me it isn’t so much stagnation (there definitely has been delivery of new features), but more so the innovation side
When I first signed up to Monzo, it had a number of features that made it special and I could actually point out and recommend to friends.
Now however, maybe the introduction of virtual cards is a bit different, but many traditional banks are delivering similar features that Monzo is.
I’d like to see the innovation continue, doing things that actually makes the service different and makes money easier. Right now, feels the similar to others
Do you think there’s an end-point, where innovation means it’s going to be small, incremental changes?
I think of this like mobile phones. There used to be massive, innovative changes almost annually, particularly with Apple and the iPhone.
However over the years, other smartphones have come up, companies have got to a similar playing field and now we get a few ‘new and improved’ features but far less outright new innovations. That’s just logic as the things possible reduces.
Monzo is, to me, the original iPhone of the mobile market. A company that shook up the industry and made it think. Was/is Monzo perfect or ideal? No. The original iPhone was laughably low in features, not even having MMS. But it shook other mobile companies up to the point where sometimes Apple is playing catch up now.
Monzo did this, in my opinion, but left some features behind that other banks had as standard. I think it’s fair for them to work on the solid structure now of basic banking expectations, and perhaps slow down the outright innovation. Improve, and slowly innovate.
I’d expect innovation to get smaller and smaller but if you look at for example starling, they haven’t stopped rolling out actual features that are useful.
Whether it’s a connected space (e.g a new card that is attached to a pot), a second personal account, a child’s account that you can manage.
They have a marketplace - although admittedly there hasn’t been that many changes in there for a while.
If we accept that Monzo has run out of innovative ideas and the others have all caught up, then what’s there to for us to continue recommending it to friends, families and colleagues over a traditional bank with far larger range of services?
The benefit of these app only banks was that the speed at which they could deliver services and innovative ideas would be faster.
I don’t deny Monzo are in some areas being outpaced but I then don’t think paying from a pot is the most radical thing or important thing for them to focus on.
Starling have a lot of good features, but they started off very slow. Very slow. They built a lot of basic banking features initially and then started to take some of the things Monzo were doing and added a few minor innovations of their own.
Everyone has been pushing Monzo for years to be as out there and innovative as possible, but never left time or room for them to sort out everyday banking features that will help them grow custom, such as a well done payee system.
Things like second personal accounts and children account are very normal in other banks, so I’m not sure I would count them as innovation.
I mean at the end of the day, Monzo is a bank. Why is my mum with TSB but my aunt with Lloyds? Why is my colleague with NatWest but my brother with Santander? In reality you just choose a bank based on your history, your location, a specific account deal or just… the design of the app/website or customer service. Monzo is a bank and some people are with them due to the above.
My mum isn’t going around recommending TSB because despite what we see on here (as we are mostly actually invested and interested in banking and fintechs) most people don’t change their banks. I don’t think we need to always have to justify Monzo to “recommend” to others because honestly that’s not a frequent normal conversation for the average Joe on the street.
Perhaps Monzo has, but you still see complaints that the offers have been barely updated since launch and that the travel insurance policy has loads of exclusions compared to other banks etc… which makes it unsuitable for many…
Yup. I was looking forward to finding an excuse to add their metal card to my collection. And although it seemed suitable on the surface, once I got into the policy wording, it wouldn’t cover me at all, let alone my family.
The insurance product here has about as many, if not more, exclusions as the N26 one had, which it got a good bashing for, and eventually had to refund folks over.
My issue is the way Monzo markets it though, even through the app flows. Until I actually dove in thoroughly and read the policy documentations it looks and sounds suitable. I hope people don’t get caught out by it, come to need it, then have claims refused as a result.
I question the monetary value they claim it’s worth too, as I managed to find much more comprehensive cover for me and my family for around £50 per year, that doesn’t have weird exclusions to exempt one of us.
Oh, what exclusions? I can’t be bothered to read through it all currently
I’d have to have another read to list the exact exclusions that stood out to me at the time, but there were quite a few.
“what useful features have been added in the past 2 years”
Equally, useful features have been removed from the app - it was possible to see a running balance, until the app was “improved”. (And yeah I know, I can get a PDF statement, but that misses the point)
Monzo is now, for me, only “OK”. Wouldn’t recommend it, currently, though, but not (quite) enough for me to move, although I do think about it every couple of weeks.
When you phrase it like that, and I really think about it…
Over the last two years, Monzo have removed more features that I care about than features they’ve actually added that I care about.
In fact, few of my recent feature requests on here aren’t actually new features at all, but simply the reinstatement of old ones.
A refreshingly blunt perspective there.
Now it’s turned into reminiscing about the Pulse Graph, which needed retiring as it wasn’t useful for a bank, but was great for pre pay
Why wasn’t it useful for a bank?
Prepay tended to be a top up, followed by a series of relatively small purchases until another top up was required.
Currents accounts tend to jump up or down massively with relatively fixed salaries and bills, so the trickle of discretionary spending is largely obscured.
The pulse graph wasn’t a complete waste of space on the current account but it wasn’t as useful.
Agreed. My salary comes in and then most of it goes out to bills or savings straight away. So there was a massive jump up, jump down and everything in between looked like one flat line.
At least it actually looked like a pulse though 
Bills pots is one of the main reasons I am still with Monzo and that was semi recent but do agree that it would be nice to see more of roadmap or something like “these are some of things we are looking into in 2021”
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