I’m the Product Manager on the Partnerships team. I’ll try and address some of the concerns I’ve read in the comments - please shout if in any way I didn’t fully respond!
I think it’ll be key for us to keep the same level of transparency as we’ve always had. Moreover, given the marketplace will involve building partnerships with 3rd parties, we’ll make sure that whoever we partner with is fully aligned with our values - that’s going to be key to build successful partnerships!
It’s worth bearing in mind that tests are very different from the type of customer journeys we have in mind for all these products. The Bulb test was very much a “Switch to Bulb, save money and get £x to switch”. That does sound like an ad that Bulb would put in the tube. However, what we can do (and what Phil mentioned in the post) is that we can create new journeys from relevant places in the app. For example, “Switch energy provider” could be in the Transaction Details screen of your energy direct debit. In our view, this feels much more like a relevant place to help you “manage your finances” rather than the feed.
I totally see your points and I partially agree with it. However, you can argue that if we did that it would be like building a small moneysupermarket.com in the Monzo app. That feels like it could easily fall in the trap of being an “offers dump”. I don’t see these as “offers” but rather new products that you can access through Monzo. We want to help you manage your financial life like a ninja and any product we add to our offering, whether through partnerships or built internally, needs to feel like relevant. Again, we might be completely wrong and we’ll do as much user testing / community outreach as we can to validate our hypothesis. We’ll definitely start with small scale tests across the product lines and iterate on them based on your feedback.
You should 100% be able to opt-out from any unsolicited offerings from Monzo. Just like you can opt out from marketing emails, if you wish to.