Because the OD fees would be more than the interest you’d get (if I’ve understood correctly?)
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Sorry yeah - if Monzo used the Starling approach of no OD fees while your account (including pots) is in credit. Should’ve been more clear!
Ah OK…
So…
Pot = £1,000 (accruing interest).
Balance = £-800
You are still £200 in credit, pay no fees on your “overdraft” and still earn interest…
Is that what you are saying?
Yeah absolutely - to me, it would seem like the most logical thing to do if pot balances were counted with regards to overdrafts. Presumably if Monzo ever did decide to include pot balances, then interest accruing pots would be excluded for that exact reason.
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Well a cash ISA might be called a “pot” but it isn’t, its a separate account otherwise it wouldn’t be an ISA or it wouldn’t be a current account. My view on pots is they are merely savings goals within your current account, promises made to be broken. With Lloyds you could just open a savings account at the click of a mouse and put the money there from your current account. Fine, thats been around for yonks. Pots were something different, or thats my view anyway. So a pot is just part of your current account and if thats the case you only go overdrawn when you run out of your cash and start spending the banks. If its interest bearing then its really a separate account not a pot, so why not just say if its interest bearing it doesn’t count?
O yes forgot that, interest on your current account, not great at starling but better than nothing.
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Yeah, I agree with @The_BrentM - Pots are just digitally ring fenced funds - There is no separate account number or anything.
If you put money in an ISA pot, then it could be excluded.
Heck, if you put it in any interest bearing pot, perhaps Monzo could exclude it (although I don’t think they should.
My amazing creative skills came up with the below, to illustrate how it looks in my head.
On the left, you’ve got Starling, who treat all the Pots/Goals as part of your account, and on the right, you’ve got Monzo who treat them separately…
This is pretty common knowledge, so adds very little to the discussion 
I just enjoy making circles…
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To be honest the Euro account currently is just somewhere to stash Euro’s BUT they are working on one card two currencies for it, very useful and I’m sure they will get there. I like Monzo but Starling have given me everything a need from my bank account and given it to me faster, MUCH faster than Monzo. I made the decision to go with them as principle account when Monzo were taking an age to get their full account bandwagon rolling and since I made that decision Starling have provided more features faster. But that said it really is not quite cigarette paper thin between the two, so Starling don’t get a blank cheque, thats competition.
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The reason Monzo give for not counting the money in non-interest bearing pots towards overdrafts is because they think it might confuse people and they want to make the difference between a Regular Pot and an interest bearing Savings Pot seemless.
NB: I’m not saying I necessarily agree with Monzo’s point of view that counting the money in non-interest bearing pots towards overdrafts makes things too confusing.
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I’m not disagreeing, but the decision was made long before Monzo showed any signs of offering interest (I think?)
I’m not someone who is a prolific user of Pots, so it doesn’t affect me - I just think it would be nice if they could make it work (and make it easy to understand).
If they wanted to, I’m sure they could do it.
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I remember @anon91821566 mentioning that it would become too confusing when would start linking savings accounts to pots, but I could be misremembering or just put two and two together (ie: overdrafts don’t take into account money in pots + Monzo stated early on they wanted to offer savings accounts from other providers as pots).
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It was. I first noticed it when they said they would charge an overdraft fee to customers who were in credit. You might remember that thread!
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How could I forget 
Of course, what @awjdean is saying may be true - But I don’t remember that being the message I got at the time.
Like I’ve said recently (with regards to Monzo Plus), there seems to be quite a few instances where the potential “vision” and underlying thinking at Monzo HQ, isn’t necessarily communicated well to us mere mortals, and then it’s like a game of Chinese Whispers…
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Is this the new UKIP logo? 
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This is one of my biggest annoyances with Monzo. They aren’t (so far as I know) different savings accounts with a different account number (like traditional banks) so there is no good reason why money in pots should not be counted as your overall balance.
Monzo certainly are making the same money from it, whether it’s in the pot or not.
On the Starling front though, I tried to log in and encountered some issues. Had to actually call them (!!) and the guy on the phone couldn’t have been less enthused about his job. Anyway the security was completely random, and I was asked about a payee on a specific day from a year and a half ago and because I couldn’t recall it, I didn’t pass security.
So he told me to hang up and call back again so I’d have a different representative with a different question to ask 
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The ISA is a separate account with an account number, like a normal savings account. This wouldn’t be counted.
Pots are literally just a virtual spacing of your own money.
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That is the most bizarre security I’ve ever heard of! 
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It was so specific. To be honest I haven’t used my account in so long I’d probably fail any of those kind of tests.
I could give him my addresses, previous addresses, passport number, birthday, NI number, even the date I opened the account. But no, because I don’t remember who I paid in November 2017 that’s enough to suggest it’s not me…
But don’t worry, I can just call back and speak to someone else. What a weird system.
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What a weird system. GDPR doesn’t state that a particular number of questions need to be asked, but surely providing all that other information would suffice from a logical point of view.
Definitely alarming if the call handler told you to call back to get a different question, doesn’t seem like something you should tell someone who’s just failed security lol.
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That’s right and at the time it made zero sense. However now, to be fair, I can see how it makes sense.
If Monzo had done what Starling do and counted it part of your balance for the purpose of overdraft but then couldn’t for Interest bearing pots and ISAs then:
a) it would be confusing, some pots would do it and some wouldn’t or the feature taken away altogether
b) everyone would kick off because something has been taken away from them (a la unlimited cash withdrawls) or changed to their detriment.
But yes, the messaging wasn’t clear at the time.
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Monzo have made clear that their overdrafts are focused on simplicity, not being competitive. From this perspective how it works makes sense.
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