Transferring Money from UK Monzo to US Monzo

Hi guys,

Apologies if this has been answered before.

Just thinking ahead a little - it’s likely next year I’ll be relocating to the US with work. One question I always had regardless of Monzo or not is the best way to transfer any money / savings from a UK account into a new account based in a new country without spending half of your savings in fee’s just to transfer it across.

If Monzo is available in the US by the time I moved, I guess it should be fairly simple to do a complete transfer of all funds - pots, savings, current account balance into a new US account, right? Or would it just be a case of using the in app “send money internationally” option?

Kind regards,

Max

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I don’t know for sure but I would have thought you would need to have a UK and open a new US account and use the TransferWise within the UK version to send it to your US account. Then recreate all the pots again.

I don’t know how much you are moving but £37 to transfer £10K atm.

Would be ace if Monzo makes the process a lot smoother or give a better rate :crossed_fingers:.

Edit: If you are going to be moving serious cash from a sale of a house etc then I’d use a specialist currency broker otherwise you’ll be paying a grand to move a few hundred thousand. ( £2,793.22 for £1m with TransferWise)

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I didn’t realise how reasonable the cost would be for TransferWise to be honest!

Even so, a smooth Monzo > Monzo process would definitely be a huge selling point to “convert” users that move countries (especially if Monzo establish themselves globally in the future) :slight_smile:

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Would still have costs associated but at least Transferwise sets the bar for those.

I’d still also recommend getting a quote from https://www.westernunion.com/gb/en/send-money/app/start (selecting bank account) depending on how much you are sending (> £50k). It’s usually fairly close but might give you a few extra :dollar:

This is bit off topic, but maybe someone knows why does EU/UK banks ask if you have US bank account before you open account with them? Does that put you in a spotlight for probable money laundering or something like that?..and if you have, they might not allow you to open account with them. :thinking:

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They ask this to comply with the US’s FATCA legislation. The US treasury is very, very interested in what their taxpayers are doing with any money overseas.

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Hey Max! Thanks for asking, it’s a great question.

Effectively, what we are launching in the US should for now be considered a separate product to our UK product. The main difference is that what we are launching in the US, isn’t a bank, but a financial services app and debit card in partnership with an existing sponsoring bank.

Because of that, a “migration” such as what you’ve described isn’t quite as simple and isn’t something we’ve scoped out. It’s also not something we anticipate a huge amount of demand for - since most UK users won’t be in a position to open a US account.

It sounds like a very cool idea though! But realistically speaking, if you are moving to the US and opening one of our US accounts, it’d most likely just be a straightforward international transfer.

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Hey Simon!

Thanks for the prompt response.

Makes total sense :slight_smile: Maybe you should consider an incentive (like we’ll cover 3% of your international transfer charge in the form of a payment to your account) as a thankyou for sticking with Monzo when relocating to a company that supports it? :slight_smile:

Qualifying criteria could be:-

  • Must have held a UK Monzo account for over 2 years
  • Must be transferring a minimum of ÂŁ10,000
  • Must have a positive UK Monzo balance (no loans outstanding or overdraft)

Not that you guys I guess need an incentive - but I know my company are pushing me to open up a bank account before I move with the big guys like Bank of America, and I’ll stand firm and stick with Monzo - just a thought :slight_smile:

Max

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Mastercard is not an interbank network in the US.

Is this the plan long term? Or is Monzo looking for their own charter?

I can see utilising a partner bank working out long term as long as the product is fully featured. i.e. not just a prepaid card like CashApp / GreenDot.

This is what Fidelity does.

Hi. Is this likely to be a feature in the next 6 months? Or is it even a plan for the future. This is literally the one big miss for me at the moment and is the one thing stopping me from adopting my Monzo US account as my main account and getting my salary paid in, etc.

Other competitor accounts allow some version of this, for example revolut allow this but it takes approx 1 working day but better than nothing. I also understand this works one way currently - that is, you can use your UK Monzo card to top up your US Monzo card (odd to have to do this…why isn’t it a built in transfer feature?).

So…why isn’t it available the other way around? Literally would be a one stop global account essentially, all managed in one app. I’d have all my bills paid for out of Monzo and all my salary etc paid in. It’s already my main account in the UK.

Ultimately I guess the goal is to focus on other target markets and not just UK expats…but the best way to do that surely would do have all the UK expats adopt it as their main account and it feels like this would be a big win in this area? There’s obviously a reason for it not being offered but can’t see what that would be.

Anyway, if you could help to manage expectations that would be great…

I don’t think it’s likely to be within the next 6 months. Though I suspect it is on their radar, as it would make for a great selling point if Monzo US and Monzo UK customer could quickly and easily transfer money to each other. I suspect it just isn’t high up on the list of priorities right now. And transferwise is currently integrated, which should allow you to do this anyway, but it’s also a one way thing, as I don’t believe the US version has this functionality to send money back to the UK one.

There is also a peer to peer payments app out there, whose primary focus is exactly this, quickly and easily sending money to and from US and UK bank accounts. I use it quite regularly to send money to, and receive money from, my friends and family based in California. You may be able to use the service to do the same thing until Monzo have built something similar directly in their app. You’d need to create a UK based account, and a US based one, which would require two separate devices, as it is an app, linking your UK Monzo account with the UK cash app account, and your US monzo account with the US cash app account. You can read more about it here: Cash App - Support

Another workaround is as you mentioned: top up using your UK Monzo card. To send money back to your UK account, you could use Monzo.me. There is a ÂŁ100 per transfer limit with monzo.me, and a ÂŁ500 per card per month limit, but it does work, and a few of my friends have been able to send me money using monzo.me in the past. The limits will be a significant hinderance though.

Neither workaround is ideal, and hopefully Monzo do have this functionality built and in place sooner rather than later. It would certainly interest more of my US friends to try out Monzo once they’re open to the public!

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On a tangent to this topic, one thing I’ve seen at a credit union I recently signed up for made me wonder if Monzo could implement something similar. If it was just about the functionality of a bank account and you didn’t mind mixing your money and saving it in one currency, would it be possible to implement functionality where you get a UK sort code and account number attached to a US account or a US routing and account number attached to your UK account? I just signed up for Service Credit Union, which gives me both a US routing/account number and a German IBAN, both good for payments in and out of my US dollar checking account. And coming back to this:

I’ve got a US Revolut account and it already has both a USD balance with US routing/account number and a GBP balance with UK sort code/account number. I haven’t fiddled with the GBP balance much, but I do seem to be able to convert instantly, so I’m curious as to where the GBP balance function falls short of a proper Revolut UK account (that you’d transfer money between the two and keep them separately).

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