Hey community Itâs Rore, the Product Marketing Manager for Monzo Plus and Premium here with an update.
Today weâre making all Trends graphs and time periods available for all Monzo customers, for free.
Across Monzo weâve been working on ways to support our customers during the cost of living crisis and one thing weâve 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 youâll see the graph (even if you donât have Plus or Premium).
If you swipe any graph in balances or spending you can also see your previous spending behaviour, not just this monthâs.
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 youâre getting access to these features for the first time, let us know if you find them useful. Weâre 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 isnât 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
Thereâs 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 thereâs a case for the some Plus features to be free for all, because theyâd encourage use as a primary account. Maybe connected accounts is the exception though⌠As I say modelling it would be fascinating
The only difference I see is trends doesnât require much ongoing cost to maintain, whereas open banking probably does need constant attention and monzo donât 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?
Itâs 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 wonât 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 canât say they want to help but then make people pay for the pleasure if they donât 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 donât 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 theyâll be looking at the data and that this might be the first of a set of changes.
Either way, I think itâs better to bank it than reject it because something bigger wasnât offered.
You arenât a B Corp. This is a boardroom decision in a capitalist society for a loss making bank. What you are doing is GOOD, but letâs not pretend it is purely because you care. You have done the maths and think it is in Monzaâs 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, âitâs not enough, we want more!â. Or, âyouâve got some sneaky anterior motive and you shouldnât get any credit for this, but thanksâ.
Youâre right. They should have given premium away for free too. In fact, they should start paying people ÂŁ15 a month for taking out premium. Now thatâs properly helping.
Little bit different as insurances donât connect with trends.
Not sure if you canât see my point or just dismissing it for the sake of it, allâs Iâm saying is donât restrict something youâre offering people, let them actually make use of it.
In my experience other banks donât 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 donât see a problem with them charging for it.
Trends is built from monzo back pocket, the product is built, hence they wonât charge for it now.
Open banking canât 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 âmakes money work for everyoneâ 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, itâs just useless to me, doesnât tell me anything which I donât already know. Thereâs nothing insightful one bit that has opened my eyes to what Iâm spending.
I donât have the need to constantly check up on what Iâve been spending, when Iâve spent it, where Iâve 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 whoâs struggling already will find it that useful either. They already know whatâs been spent and whatâs left to spend.
Itâs Rore, the Product Marketing Manager for Monzo Plus and Premium here with an update.
