Hey community Itās Rore, the Product Marketing Manager for Monzo Plus and Premium here with an update.
Today weāre making all Trends graphs and time periods available for all Monzo customers, for free.
Across Monzo weāve been working on ways to support our customers during the cost of living crisis and one thing weāve heard from lots of people (including on here) is how Monzo tools are helping you understand your finances, especially as costs increase and budgets get tighter. So we decided to make some of the Trends functionality that was only available with Plus and Premium, available to everyone.
Interactive spending and balance graphs are now available to all Monzo customers, for free
If you go into spending in Trends youāll see the graph (even if you donāt have Plus or Premium).
If you swipe any graph in balances or spending you can also see your previous spending behaviour, not just this monthās.
Tap for insights, and swipe between months and years
Head to Trends in the app and toggle between balances and spending to see all graphs are available to view. Tap the graph to gain spending insights and understand the pace of your spending
Change the time period to understand past spending behaviour. Your graph shows the current month by default. Tap the time period in the top of the screen to choose a past time period or simply swipe back and forth on the graph to shuffle between different months and years.
Monzo Plus is Ā£5 per month ā¢ 3 month minimum ā¢ Must be aged 18+ ā¢ Ts&Cs apply
Monzo Premium is Ā£15 per month ā¢ 6 month minimum ā¢ Must be aged 18-69 ā¢ Ts&Cs apply.
If youāre getting access to these features for the first time, let us know if you find them useful. Weāre continuing to work on solutions for the cost of living crisis, and to make money work for everyone, and will have more to share soon.
How come open banking isnāt free like with other banks?
Granting this to all account holders for free also allows for better visibility on all accounts across most banks, falling in line with monzo wanting to help people through the cost of living crisis
Thereās an interesting piece of analysis that I hope Monzo is doing about the revenue opportunities from Plus/Premium Vs revenue from Monzo as your main bank account, and whether more features in the free account might actually increase overall revenue, especially in a world of higher interest rates.
I think thereās a case for the some Plus features to be free for all, because theyād encourage use as a primary account. Maybe connected accounts is the exception thoughā¦ As I say modelling it would be fascinating
The only difference I see is trends doesnāt require much ongoing cost to maintain, whereas open banking probably does need constant attention and monzo donāt want to foot those costs thus keeping it paywalled.
A true desire to help would lead to true opportunity to help.
I suppose this depends on the sustainability of the measure.
If everything in Plus became free, would Monzo be a sustainable business? Would it be better to become profitable and then see what extra can be done?
Itās a tricky one and intuitively I think a lot of us were very against paywalling features in the first place. But I do get the argument that business needs to be sustainable otherwise it wonāt be able to help anyone.
It might be overblown as an analogy, but someone once described this to be as putting on your own oxygen mask before helping others with theirs.
I see that part, but they canāt say they want to help but then make people pay for the pleasure if they donāt have all their banking needs with monzo.
Monzo can make it free, they choose not to, and yes I agree somewhat they are entitled to paywall to maintain their path to profit, but donāt plea one thing and mean an entirely different thing (help Vs pay us to help you)
I suppose I see this as a positive first step, for which congratulations are due. I might be unduly naive but I assume theyāll be looking at the data and that this might be the first of a set of changes.
Either way, I think itās better to bank it than reject it because something bigger wasnāt offered.
You arenāt a B Corp. This is a boardroom decision in a capitalist society for a loss making bank. What you are doing is GOOD, but letās not pretend it is purely because you care. You have done the maths and think it is in Monzaās favour (and that is TOTALLY OK!)
Again, what you are going is GOOD - but framing it this way - that you are doing it because you care, really irritates some people.
Do something good, or give something away for free, āitās not enough, we want more!ā. Or, āyouāve got some sneaky anterior motive and you shouldnāt get any credit for this, but thanksā.
Youāre right. They should have given premium away for free too. In fact, they should start paying people Ā£15 a month for taking out premium. Now thatās properly helping.
Little bit different as insurances donāt connect with trends.
Not sure if you canāt see my point or just dismissing it for the sake of it, allās Iām saying is donāt restrict something youāre offering people, let them actually make use of it.
In my experience other banks donāt do a very good job of aggregation and analytics.
As long as Monzo provide a superior aggregation/analysis experience to what other banks provide for free (which I think they do), I donāt see a problem with them charging for it.
Trends is built from monzo back pocket, the product is built, hence they wonāt charge for it now.
Open banking canāt be displayed / handled differently to Monzo account information so why charge for one and not the other? They fall hand in hand, fully helping customers manage their finances and āmakes money work for everyoneā which is what monzo strives for.
Remove the blocks to a half hearted positioning and follow up on their goal on being the best at what they do, even at a small cost.
Had a look at it, itās just useless to me, doesnāt tell me anything which I donāt already know. Thereās nothing insightful one bit that has opened my eyes to what Iām spending.
I donāt have the need to constantly check up on what Iāve been spending, when Iāve spent it, where Iāve spent it and what does it compare as to other months.
Does nothing to help with cost of living one bit, I doubt the average user whoās struggling already will find it that useful either. They already know whatās been spent and whatās left to spend.
Itās Rore, the Product Marketing Manager for Monzo Plus and Premium here with an update.
