I mean instant notifications for example when you buy your groceries or other big spend.
Or notifications when things happen on your account because I believe most legacy banks dont have this (You need to go into the app yourself)
Yes, but I use my Amex or Barclaycard Visa for that. Not my debit card. And Amex gives me instant notifications. And 1.25% cashback. The only thing going out of my bank account is direct debits, standing orders and cash withdrawals.
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Which Amex card do you have to get 1.25 on all purchases?
So why are you on the Monzo forum, what would make you switch to Monzo?
I don’t have either of those accounts but accumulate my cashback from retail offers via my debit card and one I also have “everyday offers” with Bank Of Scotland (the halifax and lloyds ones are the same also)
I don’t actually use either of my accounts for anything other than cashback purchases…
For example at the weekend I received 25% back on my parking ticket at Q-Park so there was £2.50 straightaway and I also treat the kids to some Hot Chocolate at Starbucks and got another 10% which was around £1.20 on the total bill… So there was £3.70 back in total for something I was buying anyway. Over the month I can easily make around the £30 mark.
The offers seem to be tailored on previous spending. For example I paid with one of my cards in a Harvester pub and within around 10 days I received around 5 other offers for alternative pub chains in my area. Same with Starbucks/Caffe Nero/Costa etc…
For me personally its worth doing because its free money at the end of the day and Faster Payments makes it ridiculously easy to manage passing money between the different accounts…
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Because there are lot of other interesting discussions that happen here about the fintech world. It’s good to learn and discuss with other smart people. Regarding the cashback credit card, it’s this one:
Amex Platinum Cashback Credit Card
£25 a year fee, but you get 5% cashback for the first 3 months (up to £125), 1% cashback on first £10000, and if you exceed that, 1.25%. If you do not like the fees, they do another variant of this with zero fees, but lower cashback. Because I end up loading pretty much 80% of my expenses on Amex, I go over £10000 in the first 6 months or so.
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Amex is a good thing to have depending on where you live…Its definitely worth taking advantage of it the opportunity is there
Where I am (west coast of scotland) some people dont even know what American Express is… and some retailers dont take them…so for me its not a realistic option unfortunately
Haha I feel you. However, a lot of shopping in my case happens online, the next big expense being cafes/restaurants. But if the online store takes Paypal, then I use AMEX via Paypal. For example, Domino’s Pizza did not accept AMEX directly for a long time. So I used Paypal to pay them from my AMEX card. Or Zooplus for pet foods. However I do feel that AMEX acceptance has gone up significantly due to lots of e-commerce websites popping up.
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I just have my salary paid into monzo and have standing orders set up to move money for bills to Santander and NatWest, where I get cash back for them.
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I think this is what I’ll end up doing 
Dang, just had a look. With my outgoings, I’d get a whopping £2.65 with their cashback!
I used to have a couple of cashback cards - a TSB one gave me I think £10 a month based on certain transactions being done on contactless/having an amount in… And I generally use an AMEX Cashback card for “big stuff”…
But I honestly got to the point where ‘managing the churn’ was more effort than I wanted it to be, and found areas where I was actually spending to ‘gain cashback’.
I really value the things the features that Monzo has, over the £15 a month I might make elsewhere in cashback - but would be a welcome addition, if it didn’t see costs rise elsewhere.
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If you haven’t already, I would suggest registering your cashback cards with Quidco, so you keep accumulating cashback for in-store purchases. One thing I hate about AMEX is that I have to opt-in to get cashback. Why not auto opt-in? Or atleast have a setting in the app where you can say “auto opt-in” for customers who are willing.
I think the point is that you have to conciously opt in and then you will see retailers you wouldnt normally go to and therefore spend money there
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Sure, but for common cafes/restaurants like Prezzo/Nero, it should be implicit. In my mind, an auto opt-in would be “fair”, since every retailer gets a chance to offer me something. They could show “sponsored” offers first, which would be new businesses trying extra hard to woo me.
Yes but if it was opt in you wouldnt see al the retailers
Where would the sponsered retailer appear in the app?
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At the top of the offers section in the AMEX app.