Turning off debit card top-ups for new users

That doesn’t surprise me.

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When it comes to concerns about this causing issues for users topping up, I find this quite reassuring :slight_smile:

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Don’t know. I’m nationwide :joy:

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Oh dear, you have obviously seen how I drive…oops

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Good, about time it got cut off.

Salary (or equivalent) or nothing tbh :joy_cat:

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Great update from @cookywook :+1: Some additional stats:

We process about £1bn a year through card topups, overwhelmingly driven by users who’ve upgraded from the prepaid card and not switched to bank transfer yet.

The cost of providing card topups to the average upgraded prepaid user is £12/year. Only about 50% of these users actually use card topups (the remainder rely on bank transfer), so the cost for the people who actively use card topups is around £24/year. Obviously, for the new users where we’ve turned off card topups, the cost of putting money into the account is practically zero.

By comparison, it only costs £8/year to provide Monzo’s customer service to a user.

So, it would really help keep Monzo sustainable if we could move more people away from card topups, and towards bank transfer, or even ideally direct deposit of salary (or equivalent like student loan, benefits payments, pension etc).

I’d love to hear from the community - how do think we should do this?

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I expect over time, as Monzo adds more & more value for users, they’ll switch to using Monzo as their primary account & eventually start paying their salary in.

In the meantime, it would be great if Monzo became a Payment Initiation Service Provider (or used a 3rd party’s service) to enable users to top up their account from another bank, which would mean that they only had to briefly leave the Monzo app..

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Why not just charge 3% for any card top-up or Monzo.Me to cover the costs?

I mention Monzo.Me as otherwise they will just start using that to avoid a charge on top-ups

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While card top ups can be very convienent and supporting longer term customers who helped get the company going the amount it costs can’t be ignored. I’m half tempted to say just turn it off but that would probably not be the most customer friendly or the best approach. Possibly limiting the amount that can be topped up by card and/or passing at least part of the cost on to the user might be the best way to move off this. Also education on how to transfer money and how easy it can be would probably go a long way to helping

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If I had an overdraft facility, I personally would not have to use card top up anymore. Until then, I have to make use of it…

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I think it’s good. But should be turned off for everyone. Feels like it’s creating a tiered service. Everyone should be treated the same.

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You’ve mostly been transparent to customers. Keep up the trend, set a deadline for this feature to expire and explain why to the customer base.

In the words of Apple:

“The reason to move on: courage. The courage to move on and do something new that betters all of us,”

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I think that the card top ups should be turned of or if Monzo can find a way to charge what ever it costs them so people can still use it. The other option is there a third party way to add top ups that’s more cost effective.

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If people need top-ups they can always use Monese, Starling, Fire, etc.

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I was going to suggest the same as @alexs: the best thing would be to use Open Banking to allow pulling money from other bank accounts from within the Monzo app. Samantha mentioned this in the original post on reducing the cost of debit card top-ups, and I really think it’s the way to go:

Any update on how likely this is to feature in the app one day?

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So, based on recent sign up numbers, your annual ‘provide Monzo’s customer service’, would be in the £6,400,000 region?

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We calculate these numbers based on weekly active users (inactive users don’t contact customer service or use card topups) - so about 500k actives costing around £8 each is about £4m a year in customer service salaries.

For now, we treat office rent, etc as a fixed cost - not a marginal cost. This may change as we grow and get more sophisticated.

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So Monzo have about 500k active users :eyes:

Pretty good tbh if we compare with some other FinTechs with more than million overall but less than 500k active.

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Weekly active. I’d be interested in those active at least monthly

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Wonder how many of the inactive users still have the app installed and check the features, a lot of people are probably waiting for that moment they feel it’s time to ditch legacy. It’s a big move for most!

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