Thanks Alex!!! I have only Joined Monzo today so I was not aware of this. Ill have a read now!
1 Like
Virtual Savings Accounts is a fantastic idea - what they are essentially is Budget Categories.
Does anyone here use any Budgeting Software?
Virtual savings or ‘pots’ would be a fantastic way of saving and budgeting for specific things. I can imagine myself setting up one for ‘New Car Fund’ and ‘House Deposit so far’ etc.
Have you seen the new Targets feature? 
(this is coming to Android 
as Monzo’s aiming for both apps to have all of the same features)
2 Likes
Like this idea had something similar a few years ago with the one account from RBS but that was a mortgage with no app.
Love this new feature.
I’ll be keeping an eye on this.
is the behaviour like a “rolling budget”? Where anything that you’ve not spent from a category rolls over into the next month for that category? Or is it just monthly targets that reset at the beginning of each month?
It’s the latter, the Targets are independent of the previous month’s so you can adjust them for Christmas for example, to take your plans to buy presents (if you’re feeling generous) into account 
Revolut now does them
Yeah my Thai bank does this… Allows the creation of multiple virtual visa numbers for online spending… that can be turned on or off (not as advanced as limiting or rules). Handy if your signing up for a one time item that you dont want rolled over into a subscription or for a intro offer you intend to cancel once it rises to full price.
I think you may be confusing the ‘cost per customer acquisition and set up’ to cost per card…
I deal with prepaid visa cards in my biz and I can get unlimited cards at 6.50 each… I can get custom branded ones in my own company colors for IIRC 8 per card.
Those costs include embosing not just printing on cards, and mailing to customers not just handing them out.
Those are mailed out prices and my monzo card isnt embossed…
Just saying… Card production is no where near 40 quid for me and I am getting them in the 10s and 100s… Not 10s of 1000s…
It’s since been admitted as a rumour, started by one of the alpha card holder investors 
I have in the past seen figures of £40 quoted for bank cards in UK and €45 for bank cards in France and Germany so those figures seemed consistent, they also based on quality bank cards (as we would have when the current account launched) rather than prepaid give aways
it will also depend on the bank as those ordering hundreds of thousands of cards versus those ordering ten thousand will get a cheaper rate, their economy of scale advantage
1 Like
The easiest way to reduce cost is have nameless cards that are not embossed however having a card named and having it embossed does make a card look more premium.
In 2009 MasterCard and Visa approved DoD (drop-on-demand) inkjet printing for the personalisation of their non-embossed flat-panel card products, i.e. prepay and debit cards. At that time, credit cards still had to be embossed.
Since then the payment schemes have expanded the range of cards that can be issued unembossed to cover nearly their whole product range, with the exception of certain premium products that must still be embossed in some regions. This means that DoD can now be used to produce personalised debit and credit and cards.
Embossing and indenting are decades-old methods for card production that persist despite some disadvantages. Cards with raised numbers are more expensive to produce compared to surface-printed cards. The equipment used to manufacture them is slow and expensive, as well as costly to maintain due to wear and tear.
The fully loaded cost depends on a few factors beyond just making the card:
Are you doing it in a branch or via mail - mail has postage, but in-branch has the staff time.
How do they send it to you? Faster is more expensive (from c75p regular snail mail up to c£10 for a courier) with postal prices increasing year on year.
How many items are in the envelope - if it’s just a letter and the card then that’s about £1, leaflets, terms and conditions, etc can increase the cost.
Does the card have the latest specification EMV smart chip AND contactless? That adds a few Euros (US banks estimate up to $3.00).
Do the envelope or inserts have colours printed on them?
Are they regular paper or fancy stock? Monzo colours and fancier thicker paper can add pennies or more to each envelope.
There’s also the relatively small costs of ongoing business: creating some records in 1 or more databases used to do business, transmitting that embossing data from one server to another - each of those is tiny fractions a penny for a large business but it’s worth noting that there are high fixed costs in creating and maintaining those systems.
In certain European countries banks (such as Nordea) are now producing DoD bank cards for Mæstro card customers but weather the UK is ready yet for DoD cards I am not so sure. A conservative nation, I feel UK customers will still expect and desire a ‘proper’ embossed card showing their name when it comes to a full bank account.
Once a ‘big’ bank takes that leap in the UK then I think customers will be more open to accepting flat panel cards without embossing for premium accounts to and break from the association with sub-par accounts. Then banks can reduce their production and distribution costs.
1 Like
I just looked and all my asian bank cards are not embossed… All my Euro / UK ones are… never noticed that before… Cant say it makes any difference to me… In fact hunting through my card wallet looking at non financial member cards embossing doesnt seem to lend any additional ‘wow factor’ my priority pass lounge card is embossed and doesnt look special, my eva air member card isnt and looks much higher class… Just an impression as I honestly hadn’t ever noticed this before.
The mastercards I give out I am 99% sure are embossed, chip and pin but I dont think are contactless… but I dont have any with me to check and wont have for a long time… These are 6.50 each…
I was just thinking about the same idea with one extra twist. I’ve always wanted to have a savings bucket for Christmas which I can set to be x amount of days notice. If I set it to be 90 days notice then when I put money in I am less likely to access it just because an unexpected bill came in. This would really help me save and could be used for anything. Holidays, birthdays, big purchases. The fact you can’t easily get at the money is the key.
Thanks,
Dan
#monzoforlife
3 Likes
Thank you
Thank you @marvin_luksenberg for your original post. I don’t know why any of the high-street banks have not picked this up. I used to run a poor form of this system with Nationwide e-savings accounts and standing orders at the beginning of the month, but managing all of the savings pots and transferring money back into my current account when bills came out became laborious.
I think that pots for bills or savings is an excellent idea as long as they are implemented correctly.
MY MAIN CONCERN
I love the way that Monzo tracks your monthly spending with its little graph etc. However this graph with “Normal monthly” will surely be skewed every September when I drop £4250 on my annual train ticket, in June when I renew my car insurance and in march when I pay for a years BT line rental up-front.
I would love to see virtual pots which receive any interest your current account may accrue and which when spent do not affect your typical monthly trends.
AN EXAMPLE
Every month I set aside £360 a month for train travel. As far as my budget is concerned I spend £360 a month on train travel. When I get to September I would like to purchase my train ticket from my virtual pot without Monzo thinking I have overspent this month compared to August.
This could apply to a TV licence, Car insurance, Car Tax, Line Rental, Amazon Prime, Annual Holiday, Christmas presents etc. Anything where you would put money aside monthly in order to make an annual expenditure.
6 Likes
I was looking into the PiggyPot app (http://piggypot.com/) which allows you to create unlimited “pots” and set savings targets with dates…this then works out how much you need to transfer on either a weekly or monthly basis. The problem is that it is not your bank account where the money is going…they use MangoPay to store your cash in escrow. In principle it sounds like a good idea but I am going to wait for Monzo to implement this feature as along with the current account it means I can have everything in one place. Looking forward to hearing more!
2 Likes