if you sign up for one of these savings accounts, will the balance be visible from within the Monzo app? Would the monzo app let you transfer money in and out?
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I think as of yet it doesn’t but that’s the plan once open banking is fully underway. I’ve just got the marketplace icon also and I’m loving the design / choice of suppliers so far!
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Does Monzo make any money from these referrals yet, guessing since it’s an very early beta things may change quite a bit in terms of layout / how it works yet.
It looks like it, e.g. for Bulb at the bottom of the page, it states that Monzo receives £25 per signup. At this stage, it seems like this is a fairly simple “half” of the reward, with £25 being credited to the customer’s Bulb account as a Switching Reward.
This seems fair enough to me. Yes, you can find a greater switching reward elsewhere if you know where to look, but this service is not designed for those who routinely shop around, and remember there are a great many people nationwide who are still on standard tariffs with the “big 6” and therefore paying over the odds.
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This looks very interesting. As soon as I saw first 200 places gets entered into the beta…
Such a surprise this was… I’m sure its already more than 200 people by now 
… Hopefully the rest of us can get access soon though 
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I signed up, heard back from them that the email address I filled in was not the email address I have on file with them…What? Really? 
Great first impression!
I had the same email also
Probably done 2 minutes before the person left their desk to go home. Absolute madness.
I got it too, but I had changed since first setting up my account. Apparently that’s what throws it, according to the follow up email. I’m in now!
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Feedback about energy offers:
- I already have Bulb, it would be nice if Monzo marked it (in a non creepy way like Monzo is spying me)
- What is the sort order of companies, looks random. It’s not by price, it’s not by score. It immediately made me suspicious that Monzo made this order for a reason, trying to push me towards particular company
- It didn’t allow me to easily compare details, in a scrollable table (I know it’s pain to do them user-friendly on mobile). My memory is good, but not that good, plus a lot of effort to tap into 4 companies and go back. Once that list grows, it will be ridiculous
- Price per month based on average ofgem usage tells me squat. Avg monthly might appeal to some, but in reality, someone switching is most likely to switch to the cheapest deal. I would prefer to see their most ‘average’ tariff prices (for standard tariff?) or give me brackets for energy unit cost, so I know that Bulb is from 12p per kWh/day to 20p per kWh/day, whilst Tonic is from 13p to 19p.
- Average monthly for summer, winter, gas+electricity, or just electricity? Too many variables to be meanigful, so I totally can’t compare it to my bill.
- I clicked through to all providers to judge their landing page for switch:
- Tonic was awful, very long page and some crap at the top, had to scroll at least 3-4 pages to even start the switch
- I was hoping it would have some Monzo branding/logo, to enhance trust and confirm I’m on the right path to switch
- I’m not sure I would initiate switch on my mobile device. I need to research first and I prefer to fill out my details on big screen. Some option to forward switch link easily (since Monzo knows my email address) would be great.
Feedback about Savings
- Most important things, interest rate and type of savings account (fixed term, easy access) were explained - great!
- Oak North Bank logo looks like done in Paint, didn’t fit nicely into square. Did I just go back to previous century?
I know it’s not Monzo’s fault, but maybe you should demand more. - List of savings offers looks good, varied. But… Umm, gimmie calculator so I can put the amount of money I have, select time period I can freeze my money for and then show me relevant offers. I can only imagine this list will grow, so it will become more and more unmanageable. Calculator should sort offers based on highest interest gain. Tbh, it’s probably too complex for now, but I can’t imagine Savings without it in the future.
- No trust pilot or other ‘public opinion metrics’? Not sure why, time required to registered would be nice, as it was present for Energy offers
- “Exit penalties - Yes” - oh my, couldn’t be more ominous
. Give this line ‘info’ icon with more details (not even what penalty will be, but explain why or what it might be). It feels like people stay away from savings because they are a bit alien, let’s make them friendly 
- One of the offers was in months. 6, 12, 24 and 36 months ‘clicked’ immediately. 15 and 30 months confused my head and I couldn’t instinctively recognise this duration. Could there be a better way to present this information, I think I would prefer to see 1 year 3 months and 2 years 6 months instead. Maybe switch to estimated ‘get it back’ date?
- Option to fw details to other devices and continue sign-up would be great. I didn’t check deep enough, but I’m sure at one point I would need to download pdf with T&C, and I won’t read that on my mobile.
- I checked their websites (at least one per bank). Again, I had hopes for Monzo branding but here’s how I felt about those websites:
- Oak North had seemingly most friendly page on mobile (despite logo), didn’t overwhelm, I had all I wanted to look at available without trying to find it.
- Clydesdale Bank, so much text, small text. Heavy, scary. Summary box is collapsed by default, after expanding… gosh, not sure if it’s a summary.
- Shawbook Bank… At first it looks ok, but as I tried to extract information from their page it got a lot worse… this page didn’t have any clear ‘Apply’, all it was doing was recommending various services, probably all of them in one go. I dislike such marketing approach, I was expecting to see particular product, not a company that pushes all possible products in one go on me (Including pushing me to business banking, should I need it). This must be the worst converting site out of three if I had to make a guess. Not friendly.
- Overall, landing pages for Savings lost drastically with Energy landing pages. I expected to be ‘treated’ better, even though I know Monzo has no or little control over those pages. Maybe in initial rollout, Monzo could help those poor banks come up with decent product presentation? I’m sure that promise of better conversion rates should convince those banks to go for it. I don’t want Marketplace to be a constant shock, nice app, ugly website, nice app, ugly website
Other:
- I liked that opt-in to be contacted in the future on feedback, that’s how it should be done.
- Cookie policies on most of those sites are half a page on mobile. Not their fault, not Monzo’s fault, but such a break in the experience as you can’t see a thing until you dismiss notification.
- Tiny thing, when you go into details for an offer and then you return to the list of offers, it always scrolls back to the top. Since offers on Savings are mostly from 2 banks, it was quite difficult to focus and check ‘next’ offer without conscious effort to remember what I clicked the last time. Android device.
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Agree with this post
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Randomised sorting would encourage me to think it’s impartial (maybe different each time it loads); but having the option to sort (Review score, cost). It appears to be sorted alphabetically atm.
Maybe an option to enter more information? I believe current bills have a QR that can be scanned to make this easy…
Looking at Shawbrook Bank Reviews | Read Customer Service Reviews of www.shawbrook.co.uk, the reviews include loans and other products which may skew the score.
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I think long term goals would be if you paid your gas and electric via Monzo direct debit they would automatically calculate the estimates from those figures if you wish
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Is it just me or is the option to “take me back to savings” not really intuitive? I kept hitting the “back” button at top left corner while trying to view all the options available and exiting the marketplace entirely since that’s how I’m used to navigating the app. It’s frustrating.
I would like an option to filter by cost/ trustpilot reviews. At the moment it seems random/ organised in a way I’m not sure why (a closer partnership?) and I think most people would look at these options first.
I really appreciate that the time needed for signup/ exit fees etc and other fine print details we might miss out is highlighted. I love how slick everything looks- the jump between the info presented on Monzo and the site itself is worlds apart!
Edited to add that I agree with this.
Would have loved more info about this at a glance or even a tiny line about what it could be. I know it might be too much info to cram in but some of the sites really aren’t very mobile friendly. Which is a problem since Monzo is a strictly app only platform- so depending on how convincing the offer is, I might not bother trying to copy the link and switch over to my laptop to look this up.
Perhaps in the future when more brands/ companies are added it could be supported by location/ data from spending patterns, etc. At the moment I don’t have any products and services I see myself purchasing and if it could be better sorted for me that would be ideal.
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Amazing opportunity!
I agree also with the navigation
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Not just you! I keep swiping right from the left side of my screen expecting to go back a screen, and instead exiting the marketplace like you mention, hopefully they can change this for the future
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To do what? You really need to elaborate on what you are saying.
+1 for that! Agree totally
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Yup I kept doing this to expecting it to take me back rather than back to my account screen.
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