I’ve done a partial switch over to Monzo.
All my DDs were apparently moved over.
My Life Insurance DD is listed in Monzo. Yet today, it’s gone out of my old account and has left me overdrawn.
Has anyone else had this issue?
Partial switch here too - got an alert yesterday telling me I had not paid a bill which should have come from Monzo. Confirmed with Monzo the direct debit had gone over successfully, but unfortunately the company was unable to take the payment from direct debit (I eventually paid from Monzo manually).
Yes, I had this issue too (with a mortgage payment).
Given the way it works right now I’d recommend no-one uses partial CASS, because it doesn’t offer the same guarantees, but crucially it doesn’t even work the same way.
Apparently partial switches work differently from full CASS, there is no redirection, which is a pretty huge difference. On full CASS there is a central service which redirects payments (for up to 3 years now I think), and so even if the merchant doesn’t change the details, you’ll be fine as the DD will come out of your new bank without them being aware, and there is plenty of time to fix the payment (I imagine eventually merchants will realise they are responsible for updating). I hope Monzo has a process in place to make sure merchants do update properly, or all full switchers will face this problem too after a while probably as the redirection expires.
I think Monzo really need to get on top of this or they’re going to have a lot of disappointed customers, personally I’d withdraw the partial CASS service since this seems to be a structural problem with it - customers would be better off just switching payments manually, as it looks to the customer like the switch has worked, but they have no way of checking the merchant side, and there is no redirection. They could at least check with merchants that DDs have been updated properly by sending out several reminders.
Really disappointing and I don’t think Monzo should offer this in its current state. At the very least there needs to be a huge warning explaining this issue, because of the differences between full and partial switch mean Monzo have no idea if partials are going to work. If I’d known that I would have just done it manually.
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Does Monzo make people aware of this before they use the partial switch?
I have also had this issue
Hi Cheryl,
This might have been due to the way direct debits are handled. An example:
- 1st May: company sends request for Direct Debit payment
- 6th May: direct debit leaves your account
There is a 5 day period between the company sending the direct debit request and the money being billed. Was your switch date less than 5 days before your life insurance was billed to your other account?
My ‘switch finished’ notification was exactly 7 days ago, and the payment went out this morning.
I do really think there should have been some kind of warning about this. I certainly didn’t see one.
Fortunately I’m still waiting on a payment into my old bank account so I’m checking for it regularly. Otherwise, I would have ended up with charges for being overdrawn. Especially as according to my calendar it’s gone out a day early for some reason. Luckily I spotted it and have replaced the funds.
I transferred 7-8 DDs and I’ve had problems with four of them. Two appear to be the company choosing not to take a payment while they got the account details updated, but two tried to take it from my old bank account and failed.
I don’t think there was any warning in the app that the partial switch is not as smooth as the full switch.
It’s not down to this unfortunately. Mine was done a few weeks before.
I don’t notice any explanation. Found out later from CS. It’s weird as partial switch seems safer to end users but is actually far more risky.
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Partial switches aren’t protected. I honestly don’t know why but there we are.
It’s just easier to do it manually. At least then you know.
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I don’t care if they are protected (was aware of that, it’s not too important), but I do care they use a different process and are completely unreliable, and the dd appearing in monzo means little as the merchant must also update. This needs to be a lot clearer or probably just not an option as it is not worth the risk.
Hey Kenny,
I’m really sorry the switch as been a bad experience for you. You’re not alone in your feedback, and as a result we’ll be updating the information displayed in the app, and following up details with emails too 
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Thanks, great to hear that - I think making it clear the process is different would help a lot - it’s more risky to try a partial transfer which is pretty counter intuitive.
The monzo part was well done (apart from the lack of warnings), but it looks like Monzo simply can’t rely on the third parties involved, which is why I proposed getting rid of partial altogether. If enough users see problems, I’d seriously consider parking the feature till merchants are up to speed, as it’s a terrible experience for the customer to see the DD in monzo, think it is done, then find it is not actually transferred. If you do keep partial switches, I wonder if there’s some way Monzo could mark them as pending, and then make sure you get confirmation from the merchant that they have changed details?
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Both of the direct debits I transferred using partial switch failed. I spoke to Monzo CS earlier and then spent ages on the phone with the council getting it fixed today.
I’ve also had the same issue. Have to say I’m disappointed that Monzo didn’t make clear from the start that the partial switch wasn’t seamless. All the information available suggested that it should be (e.g. ‘we’ll do the rest’). If I have to contact payees anyway then Monzo obviously isn’t ‘doing the rest’ and it would have been simpler for me to go through them in the first place.
Agree with others that if the process isn’t working effectively (and I accept this isn’t down to Monzo really) then it shouldn’t be an option.
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I currently have a partial switch in progress (awaiting data from legacy bank) — given the feedback here, would you recommend cancelling and completing manually instead? I don’t have many DD (5 or so) so I can’t imagine it would take me long, plus piece of mind to ensure it doesn’t fail? 
Yes, absolutely!
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Thanks for that, on with CS now to cancel the partial switch. Completely appreciate it’s not a Monzo issue but don’t want to risk things messing up.
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Majority of DD can be updated online these days. Which makes like easier
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