So I am completely ecstatic because yesterday I received my Monzo Current Account debit card!!! Its arrival also happened to coincide with the new Pots update so I’m feeling like a total winner right now!
Part of my excitement is because I’ve been eagerly awaiting the moment that I can be entirely rid of HSBC and switch over fully to Monzo however, before I dive in head first I thought I’d get some opinions… is it too early to switch completely to Monzo yet?
For example, as far as I can tell there is no feature to get statements from Monzo yet, so if I need to get those for whatever reason (applying for a visa comes to mind) then I’m screwed.
Also, we’ll be moving flats soon so how would moving all my banking over to Monzo affect my credit rating for reference checks?
I noticed that the Current Account has a BIC number but no IBAN - I do receive a few international payment so is this currently possible with the Monzo Current Account?
I’m sure there are probably other regular banking things that I’m missing that Monzo hasn’t got to yet so…
My TL;DR question:
Should I not quite make the full switch to the Monzo Current Account yet and keep treating it like the prepaid card and just top it up with transfers from my main bank as needed?
There are no formal statements but you can request the equivalent and they’ll email you a PDF. You can also export your transactions as an excel doc if you want that.
It shouldn’t affect your credit rating at all, they do a soft check to verify your identity, but they’re not offering you any credit facilities unless you apply for an overdraft when they’re made available.
No ability for international payments, you’re right. I’d suggest if you need these, keep your old account open and transfer money over. Or use TransferWise.
I use it as my main current account and have since July and haven’t had any problems
There is no need to close your old current account and in fact having a bank account for a long time is a positive on most credit checks.
I’ve had an FD account for 26 years - no intention of closing it and I use it as the reference account for credit checks even though I use my monzo account for day to day activities.
Given everything in your longer post, I think that’s the best thing to do for now. Having more than one bank account is perfectly fine, and you can always re-evaluate later down the line and see if any of the missing things you need are now available.
Also, as DaveTMB says, having a bank account for a long time is positive on credit checks and as you say you’re moving soon, it would probably be helpful to keep the positive influence for the time being.
At the moment, if you need to pay in cash, you will also need to keep your HSBC account around. As others have said, though, you can move all your activity over to Monzo, leave an active but empty HSBC account, and use that account for receiving occasional international payments or depositing cash, which you can promptly transfer across to Monzo using Faster Payments.
I completely switched and don’t regret it. Don’t get me wrong, I still have my Lloyds account open, and there is 3 direct debits on there that I’ve not been able to switch yet. Car insurance being one of them, but the way I’ve gotten around this for now, is to setup a standing order to my old account for the amount of the direct debits coming out. Bit of a work around, but saves me doing anything manually.
Ran into some issues last week when trying to setup car finance, where they rejected copies of my payslips for some reason, so they wanted to use something called “MOGO Bank Connect” so they can get a copy of my statements digitally, which Monzo doesn’t support (As far as I know) - At the end of it, they were okay using my lloyds account for it even though my last two pay slips haven’t gone into it… Strange.
Anyway, I’ve had no real problems and not experienced any rejected transactions etc yet. So All good for me! This is something personal to you though, as it is your finances at the end of the day!
I’m in the process of ‘completely’ switching, but plan to leave the Lloyds account open for history.
I neither receive international payments nor intend to apply for a visa anywhere anytime soon (and even then, only certain types of visas for certain countries will look at bank statements - a tourist visa, for example, is unlikely to - or unlikely to require much of a statement at least).
Moving flat/credit checks - it’s one change to a current account. Making sure your credit cards are paid in full and you don’t close old credit cards will matter far more.
Am I right in saying that banks don’t really factor into your credit rating unless you have direct debits etc (which work in your favour) or overdraft fees (which work against you)?
Payslips are one of the easiest things to make fraudulent copies of. I work in car finance and my company doesn’t accept them for anything.
We use something called CATO which checks average money into your account meets your stated salary. We also accept statements that show your salary coming in. We would have questioned the last two months not being there
You’re definitely a winner, Thomas - couldn’t have timed it better!
We’d absolutely love it if you were to start using Monzo as your main account! We’re still working on offering full statements, but in the meantime you can export your transactions from the app into a CSV or QIF format. If you need proof of account ownership, we can sort that out for you - just give us a shout through the in-app chat
There’s no harm in keeping your existing account with HSBC open, especially if you’re moving soon! As a few others have suggested, you could even keep it active and empty, and still use Monzo as your main account. We only run a ‘soft’ credit check when you open an account, and this leaves no digital footprint - you’ll have had this check done already when you opened your account.
We don’t support international payments yet, but it’s definitely something we’re looking to implement.
There’s no pressure, though! If for now, you’d like to continue using the current account in the same way you’ve always used the prepaid card, that’s cool! Do what’s best for you, and if doing that allows you to use Monzo as your main bank, then that’s all the better
Yeah! I mentioned that my latest two pay cheques hadn’t gone into that account and they were like “We’ll run our tests and see what happens” so… yolo I guess!
When Monzo say: “We only run a ‘soft’ credit check when you open an account, and this leaves no digital footprint”, that’s not true.
They leave a massive digital footprint all over your credit record which shows the fact you have a Monzo Current Account. I wouldn’t have thought this was an issue but to say there’s no digital footprint is just incorrect.
You’re right, I should have been clearer here - apologies!
When we refer to a ‘soft’ credit check and say this doesn’t leave a digital footprint, what we mean is that these kinds of searches don’t impact your ability to obtain other credit in the same way that a ‘hard’ credit check could; other companies checking your credit file to make credit decisions won’t see this ‘soft’ check we’ve run. We’re not running a credit check in order to make a credit decision, rather, we’re running it for identity and verification purposes. Every ‘hard’ credit check you go through is fully visible on your credit file, and other companies performing searches on your file will see these; generally it’s advised not to have too many ‘hard’ searches on your file in a short space of time, as lenders can view this negatively.
Its arrival also happened to coincide with the new Pots update so I’m feeling like a total winner right now! 
