Hey community It’s Rore, the Product Marketing Manager for Monzo Plus and Premium here with an update.
Today we’re making all Trends graphs and time periods available for all Monzo customers, for free.
Across Monzo we’ve been working on ways to support our customers during the cost of living crisis and one thing we’ve 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 you’ll see the graph (even if you don’t have Plus or Premium).
If you swipe any graph in balances or spending you can also see your previous spending behaviour, not just this month’s.
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 £5 per month • 3 month minimum • Must be aged 18+ • Ts&Cs apply
Monzo Premium is £15 per month • 6 month minimum • Must be aged 18-69 • Ts&Cs apply.
If you’re getting access to these features for the first time, let us know if you find them useful. We’re 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 isn’t 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
There’s 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 there’s a case for the some Plus features to be free for all, because they’d encourage use as a primary account. Maybe connected accounts is the exception though… As I say modelling it would be fascinating
It’d be interesting to see what the driving factor behind the shift here with the graphs was though, is it really a cost of living thing, if so, why not open banking to enable that overall view for a member across all their spending?
Either way, a slow devaluation (alongside more competitive interest rates elsewhere as you mention) of plus/premium may see many questioning what they’re sticking with it for?
The only difference I see is trends doesn’t require much ongoing cost to maintain, whereas open banking probably does need constant attention and monzo don’t 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?
It’s 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 won’t 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 can’t say they want to help but then make people pay for the pleasure if they don’t 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 don’t 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 they’ll be looking at the data and that this might be the first of a set of changes.
Either way, I think it’s better to bank it than reject it because something bigger wasn’t offered.
Honestly as awesome as this change is, making this free is a more compelling reason to downgrade than the open banking stuff, especially given that they’ve gone further with it than I ever expected for free users.
You aren’t a B Corp. This is a boardroom decision in a capitalist society for a loss making bank. What you are doing is GOOD, but let’s not pretend it is purely because you care. You have done the maths and think it is in Monza’s 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, “it’s not enough, we want more!”. Or, “you’ve got some sneaky anterior motive and you shouldn’t get any credit for this, but thanks”.
You’re right. They should have given premium away for free too. In fact, they should start paying people £15 a month for taking out premium. Now that’s properly helping.
Little bit different as insurances don’t connect with trends.
Not sure if you can’t see my point or just dismissing it for the sake of it, all’s I’m saying is don’t restrict something you’re offering people, let them actually make use of it.
It’s Rore, the Product Marketing Manager for Monzo Plus and Premium here with an update.
