Time to Rethink Plus and Premium Offers

Monzo Chat Monzo Plus
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There has been a lot of chat about how the offers generally suck and are rarely refreshed. They offer very little value as a quick Google will usually present a better offer. Monzo have been lazy in two respects here a) not updating the offers regularly and b) not striking deals with the retailers in order to make affiliate commission.

Anyhow, what if instead of offers, they offered cash back at certain retailers? Lets have a look at Revolut are offering right now:

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In the interests of fairness I will point out that some of these are ‘up to’ percentages and some have minimum spends, or are limited to certain product categories (for example the Amazon cash back is just for Amazon devices).

No codes to mess about with, just pay with your Revolut card. Revolut take care of everything else. I think overall, this is a much better proposition for the customers than what Monzo has. Wide variety of main stream retailers, new offers frequently and auto cash back with no coupons.

So, how is it better for Monzo? Well simply, they need to monetise it unlike at the present time. At least once every two weeks it seems I get an email from ASOS with a 20% discount coupon to use between 7pm and 9pm. All Monzo need to do is negotiate with retailers:

Hello ASOS, we are a back with five million customers, two million of which only spend with you once every six months. Reimburse us 15% of all spend with our BINs between 5pm and 10pm on the last Friday of the month and we will send a push notification offering all our customers 10% cash back.

Monzo keep the 5%. Repeat x 20 retailers. The rest of time time, Monzo could offer 1% cash back from their own pocket (by dipping into the 5% they collected). Add a maximum cash back allowed per month too.

Is it oversimplified? Yes, but you get the idea. Monzo know the brands we shop at, they know the average transaction value and how often on average we spend there. It is time to monetise that data whilst also offering customers value and encouraging signups to Plus and Premium.

Thoughts?

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I didn’t realise that it was so easy with Revolut. Surely Monzo could negotiate something similar?

Quidco do something similar but it’s a very small list of retailers (And I only ever seem to get it from Hotel Chocolate) but it’s a very nice surprise to find free money that you put absolutely zero effort into getting.

I haven’t looked at the offers since I signed up and I’ve only ever seen there’s a new one when someone on here posts it. They could actually use the Plus/Premium tab that they make us have with no benefit.

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This has caught my attention. I was under the impression you had to shop via a special affiliate and user your Revolut card, but it’s been a while since I’ve looked through Revolut’s stuff. Barclays Blue Rewards is similar too, in that you have to shop using their affiliate links. Is this not the case with Revolut?

Because if they’ve managed to forego the need to shop via a specific URL, and just pay you for your otherwise regular shopping at those retailers, then that’s brilliant, and dare I say, game changing. If it applies in store too, even better!

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I’m pretty sure you have to follow a link

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I’d like to see cashback offers with popular retailers too, especially if it means the only thing I need to do is pay with Monzo. And ideally with a [cough] Joint account card.

Use physical card = cashback
Use Google/Apple Pay = cashback
Use card details online (includes Virtual Cards) = cashback

Nice.

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The dream! :heart_eyes:

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Revolut isnt a great example here in my opinion, it’s basically just like having Top Cashback integrated in the app, you don’t just get it by paying with their card. You have to follow a tracking link and then pay with Revolut, if you don’t use the tracking link then you won’t get Cashback.

Whilst it’s a nice to have feature, it’s not as easy as you’d think, and for the large amount of people that use cashback sites already, they’ll probably just stick with them.

Your vision is great, and I’d love to see it, but just wanted to point out that Revolut do not do this.

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Moneybox also do similar, follow the link make the payment then you get the cashback put back into your savings automatically.

Couple screenshots attached I’ll not post all the offers as it’s a long list to scroll through.

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To be clear, these are all using affiliate links.

What I’m proposing is integrating it by using it based on the BIN.

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Yeah kind of similar to how airtime rewards do it would be a massive improvement.

They track all card spend at their partnered companies using open banking so its definitely possible and should maybe even be easier since monzo would be cutting out the middleman.

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I would stick to using Quidco/TCB because it’s habit for me now and works with any card.

Also for relatives the chrome extension is great when they forget which is all the time.

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I’m not sure it’s a game changer, NatWest do something similar with their rewards account, Amex have a similar thing where you get cash back and you can load extra offers onto your card. Santander have a similar thing.

Maybe I’m missing something here?

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Corrected that for you :heart:

I miss Monzo Points :pensive:

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Me too!

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it would have been easier not to list offers as a plus feature. it was one of the key draws to Plus v1 for me and it was awful.

Similarly I’ve been monitoring how it’s going now and it’s still a turn off. sure, not the most important feature but you have nice features and you have carrots. this is like the little carrot I pulled out of the soil last year that my daughter had planted as a seed. Measly and disappointing

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NatWest’s is actually really good. I have a ton of reward offers and I don’t need to do anything but use my card.

There are more offers than I can even remember. I just had to (sadly) visit home for a funeral and I got £6.45 rewards for my train journey without even realising it.

They can then either be converted to cash or something else. I tend to convert them to Avios.

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While I’d certainly like this if it were to be a thing, I think my position is best summed up by:

I suspect that offers are not a deciding factor for anyone. Indeed, the current ones raise more questions than they answer, so I’d rather be rid of them, to be honest.

Would I like Monzo to put in a lot of effort as described up thread? Yes.

But would I like that at the expense of better budgeting, payments from pots, a credit card, or fixing support? No.

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I would be surprised if the same people who design app features are the same people who negotiate deals with companies. I would imagine neither would affect each other in terms of manpower.

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Thing is, I very much doubt they have a dedicated team negotiating deals. If they have, then, well…

So the question is more about whether that money could better be spent on an engineering squad or on employing a negotiating team. Again, I’d rather have both, but if there’s a trade-off, then I come to the same conclusion, alas.

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You’re right that they probably don’t have a dedicated team, but they will have someone/people as there are some basic offers on offer. I understand your point, but I don’t think Monzo focusing on offers would affect development of the app/features.