What features in a Monzo app would you be willing to pay for?

Monzo Chat Monzo Plus
101

Hi all :wave:,

Just jumping in with a few thoughts of my own here. As with Kieran above, I don’t have anything to do with the Monzo Plus team, I’m busy enough as a front-line COp.

Doing Premium Monzo - The Monzo Way?
Personally I’d like to see Monzo doing what other paid subscriptions do, just better - and do it the Monzo way. That means we’d make it easily accessible, we’d make it intuitive and we’d make it fun.

I’ve looked at software like YNAB, as well as other budgetry offerings and I’d pay for something like that. However I’m #FullMonzo. I want something integrated into my app, which takes into account how Pots work, savings pots, salary sorter, bills pots etc etc. I want it to be native and I want it to be natural. I’d like it to be able to pull in data elsewhere for example, from a credit card. But it should be a Monzo feature and largely based on Monzo’s services. It’s a service that goes above and beyond what I’d expect from a bank account, even from a fintech.

Paid services should be another reason to go #FullMonzo. So in my mind we should offer what other banks and software do, but better. It’s why, personally, I was sad that v1 of Monzo Plus didn’t work out the way we hoped, but I believe that we can take the ideas from v1 and v2, and create something which blows the socks off our competition. The feedback from our community, and threads like this, is invaluable. People from all over the company read it, listen to it and it helps shape our direction and end product.

Personally, I’m not sure about services such as insurance - because I get them elsewhere. In fact some of my financial policies came from suggestions from people on here. I have my phone insurance with so-sure because of several recommendations here. I think it’s great, and I’m happy with that.

I would pay for extras, like lounge access. I’d be more likely to pay for that if I got a free visit though (or more :wink:), because there are sites out there that will get me a discount if I can book far enough in advance.

Perhaps, I’d pay for priority services. Like quicker cheque processing times, or being able to get my savings out of a savings pot instantly, rather than wait 24 hours. I’m uneasy with this concept though and I think it’s something we should consider carefully. However is it really any different to paying for priority boarding?

Perhaps, some currently paid-for services could be free. So I could make 2 free cash deposits at a PayPoint a month. (side note: I used this the first time the other day and was surprised how easy it was…). The perception of these sorts of things is important too.

I think the thing to remember is that different people have different ideas and we’re trying to come together to create something that suits the majority of our customer base. and why?

Keeping Monzo, Monzo
We have to increase our revenue. There are no if’s and but’s about this - if we don’t increase our revenue then there would be a point where there is no Monzo. No business/bank/organisation can survive on investor funding for ever. By increasing revenue and, eventually, becoming profitable then allows us to be more flexible in what we do. Finding revenue streams doesn’t mean that we can’t make money work for everybody and we can totally do both. (side note 2: Who knew a bank would come up with something like this? I hadn’t heard about it until my first week here, and it blew me away. Imagine what a bank making a profit could do!)

I can’t think of a business which doesn’t have a premium offering, but I’m happy to be corrected. You can fly Ryanair and take ‘premium options’ whether that’s a sandwich, luggage or priority boarding. You can add extras on to your insurance policy. In the supermarket you can buy the basics range, or you can upgrade to the finest.

The only difference is that Monzo’s current offering already offers me a service which I consider to be premium. So perhaps for us, the bar is already incredibly high.

p.s I apologise for switching between we/Monzo, us/Monzo. I’ve not been an employee for very long but I have been a customer and community member for much longer. It’s taking some getting to used to that I am part of this amazing place.

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102

Surely we are doing that? This month we launched Salary Sorter and Bills Pots. They’re, IMO, the best features Monzo has launched since the current account. It has genuinely changed the way I think and spend money. I will have saved more this month than I have in the previous 12. I’ve also had a drop in salary this month. That, to me, is amazing.

Why can’t we do both? Why can’t we create fantastic features that bring people into Monzo, and then offer something extra if people want it?

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103

I think one thing I would like Monzo to be careful of is charging excessively for something that doesn’t cost them anything.

I understand that discounts, relationships, included services, insurance, cards, merch, etc all has costs associated with it. And I would pay (if I felt like I would get value out of it)

I also understand the complexity associated with bringing together a “hub” of financial institutions. So I might pay a premium if it meant I could see my pension, my LISA, and information from a plethora of third parties where relevant.

Where I think I draw a fuzzy line is where it doesn’t really cost Monzo anything to do (beyond R&D/some light CPU cycles). So let’s say they brought out a feature tomorrow (Say Salary Sweeping, anyone, someone, please make it now) and they said okay but it’s part of this Monzo+ package and is gonna cost you then I’m gonna start questioning that.

Yes it benefits me. Yes I wan’t it (clearly). But you’re prying on that desire for simplicity where somebody else is just going to take that challenge and implement it themselves for no money.

Build valuable relationships.

In my opinion

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104

I’m just playing devil’s advocate here :firecracker:

What if introducing a Salary Sweep feature as a paid feature meant that we could keep the Salary Sorter feature free?

I’m not suggesting that this is going to happen by the way, but I imagine it’s the sort of difficult question we are going to have to ask ourselves over the coming months, years and hopefully decades.

I’m now going to run and hide in the bushes :see_no_evil:

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NO, it’s putting something behind a paywall. We do not want that. Offer me insurance products etc and if I want it I’ll pay. I will move my money very quickly I’m telling you if you make my bank a freemium offering. No joke

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106

Then you’ve crossed the line of something that I wouldn’t pay!

Of course it depends very much on per-feature basis. In this example I see far more value in Salary Sweep vs Salary Sorter, so an uneven match for me.

It’s a tough question, you’re right - but in this instance you’re asking me to pay for something that someone else will end up doing for free. It’s not difficult (christ I’ve already got it working using public API :joy:) any fintech will take it and “ooh Revolut is offering this paid Monzo feature for free, look at Revolut”

All a game of balance, I understand - but in this example I’d be on the negative side.

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107

This.

Fair. But I think it’s difficult to talk in the abstract. Until there’s a proposition, it’ll be difficult to test. And takes us back to one of the first answers:

For me, it’s now about waiting patiently until I can express an opinion on something that’s more tangible.

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108

I’m seriously thinking to move my money anyway now. When things start moving in this direction, it’s time to talk with your feet. Starling never looked so good. I don’t see how you lot can’t see, we don’t want this.

I bought the app Airmail for my IPhone. Paid £4.99 for it, one month passes and the app goes to a subscription and they want me to pay £10 a year for it when I just paid for it. essentially they wanted me to pay twice.

This feels like that.

Now you lot have my money, you want to start charging me for features that were once free. That trust in relationship will be gone, just like it has with Airmail. I’ll never use the app again even if they reverted back to how it was before.

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109

and let’s remind us all that this thread has had responses from just over 50 people voicing their opinion.

Monzo has over 3 million accounts, in multiple countries, with different looks at the world.

No decision will please everyone.

I know that some people will have the same opinion as me, and some will entirely disagree.

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110

Very diplomatic.

Your words, ‘Trust’ and ‘Relationship’ Stand out the most to me, once this trust is broken for me, the relationship is gone and it’s game over.

Sounds very dramatic, but I have no loyalty to any bank, or software company or whatever Monzo is now saying they are.

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[quote=“Vacuumfriends, post:108, topic:82036”]
Now you lot have my money, you want to start charging me for features that were once free [/quote]

I don’t think we do want to do that. I think all options are on the table, but that doesn’t mean we would necessarily go down that route.

I can’t fix the quote :rofl:

112

I agree with the points you and Peter have made on this, it is both, I’d just put software first. I think the point Kieran was trying to make after that was that it is not a traditional bank, it is going for vc funded growth and therefore will do things differently, and on a different timeline, more like Stripe say than Barclays.

Stripe is to me the best tech company comparison - interesting to note they don’t have a ‘premium’ offering, and instead charge per transaction or for services, but they are b2b, not b2c… I’d rather Monzo turned out more like Stripe than Revolut for example but there are lots of ways to sell. Thanks for the great constructive discussion all, including people from Monzo, really interesting to hear all these different ideas of what a bank could be on this thread.

I think this is the sort of arbitrary and difficult decision you’d be faced with if a premium account is introduced, every time a new feature came out. There isn’t a clear way to justify it nor can one feature really pay directly for a free one.

It works pretty well to sell plans/features if selling to a business, as the business can say - well this feature brings us x value so I’ll happily pay x/2 for it.

For consumers that is a much harder sell unless it is a product they actually need (ISA, lending, phone insurance, etc ), for individual features or a premium bundle most will just pass on it entirely if they don’t need it. It’d be a shame to see lots of features behind a paywall for that reason. There are lots of things I can think of that I would pay Monzo for, none of them are little features of the app.

To be clear I think we’d all like to pay Monzo money and see it thrive, I’m using it as my main bank, and have been waiting since last year to give you money for business banking. I’d use points if you can make it work. I’d happily buy savings, insurance, mortgages and a credit card from Monzo. It’s not that we want everything for free, but I’d like to see a bank actually live up to your slogan of making money work for everyone, and part of that is not walling off features for wealthier customers.

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113

That’s fine and a laudable aim.

The issue that Monzo have is that different people are willing to pay for different things - and it needs to work out how to offer these so they are an attractiveproduct.

Not many (comparatively) will pay for software features and they could be replicated by your competitors.

Others will pay for insurance, lounge access etc - if it suits them. But for many, such services are unnecessary or unwanted hence the disenchantment with bundles.

Paying in cheques and cash should really be basic core features and free. Monzo’s implementation of both is sub-optimal.

If I wanted a cheque cleared quickly, I would use a bank which offered cheque imaging - and some even credit the value to your account immediately. Why would I want to pay Monzo for this sort of thing?

Erm… a number of banks have been offering customers various ways to make charitable donations for years. The Big Issue trial seemed to be something of a gimmick or intern type project tbh.

If you want to succeed the oraganisation need to spend more time on the banking side.

Sticking with banking… Starling - who have also said they are going to introduce cheque imaging in the future…

I think this is the crux of the issue. Too many in the Monzo universe believe their own hype over how good they are compared to others while there are still basic features that need work such as:

  • joint account parity;
  • accepting international payments;
  • cheque imaging (which you will need for both business banking and the USA);
  • how one currently pays in cheques and cash; and
  • customer service issues.

Let alone new banking services you could be offering.

The thing is fixing these would actually mean more people would use Monzo as their primary account making the business more viable

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114

I know there is nothing revolutionary about this statement, it basically says that you need to grow the business and make money to succeed, but still, I don’t like the way it sounds when it comes from an employee of the place where I have got all my money.

Its safe to assume from that statement that Monzo don’t currently make a profit on their operations? I know I can do some research on this, and I will after this post, but I am less confident about moving all my worldly possessions on to the virtual bank than I was yesterday. Probably attaching too much weight to a comment and taking it in an abstract way but…yeah.

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115

From the 2019 Annual Report, no, not yet:

Profit and loss – our income and expenses for the year
The loss for the year after tax was £47.2m
The loss for the year after taxation was £47.2m
(compared to a loss of £30.5m in 2018). This reflects
the significant investment we’ve put into building more
products and features that:

  1. Scale to meet the needs of our customers
  2. Generate revenue for Monzo

You can read some of that here; https://monzo.com/static/docs/annual-report-2019.pdf on page 15 or so.

From 2018 to 2019, they’ve improved profitability per user, into the positive now, and I’m sure a lot has changed since April, so would be interesting to see next years report.

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116

Yet the community here told them that both the previous versions of Plus would fail, and they did - quickly. They need to listen to what people actually want and stop using biased surveys to get the answer they want.

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117

Last update we had showed that Monzo was marginally profitable. That means that for every additional customer Monzo is making a profit when only taking into account variable costs (the things that scale with growth, like support costs). It also means that Monzo isn’t yet covering its fixed costs (like rent, HR etc).

Monzo’s in good company here, though. Starling is in a similar position, as are lots of tech start-ups. It usually takes a good few years to get to profitability which is why there’s lots of funding to get to that position.

And, getting it back on topic, this is why Monzo needs to break a profit. There’s no danger to our money, but if we want an independent business that’s viable in the long term, there needs to be a path to profitability. That’s the context of the monetisation we’re talking about here, in a nutshell.

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I’m not a financier, and I’m a broad strokes kinda person when it comes to this sort of thing. Monzo brings in revenue, in lots of different places. The best place to read all about it is from the horses mouth!

Have a read of our Annual Report 2019.

I’m sorry if my comment seemed a bit brusque. It wasn’t intended to be!

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119

It’s extremely easy to break someone’s idea down, rip it to shreds, serve it to the dog and say it’s never going to work. Most ideas fail.

Monzo have a team of “Scouts” who job it is to literally shred ideas up and find reasons why they’re going to fail. For every 100 ideas they go through, there’s a chance 1 of them will be passable.

If this and other threads are anything to go by, Monzo don’t even know what their plan is. So to say it’s not going to work is kind of ridiculous - by virtue of this thread they’re asking people what they’d be willing to pay for.

Now let’s not get wires crossed here, I’ve voiced my opinion and having read other threads it sounds like they’re contemplating doing exactly what I, as a user, don’t want them to do. So do I want them looking at other options? Yes. Do I think they’re going to fail, again? Statistically, Yes.

I think this is more confirmation bias. If I asked would you rather this lovely juicy red apple, or this black apple - to eat right now in front of me. You’ll choose the red one. This is because even if you don’t like Apple’s, you know they exist, you know that’s what they look like, and you’re going to go down the path people have done before.

Now sure, there will be that person who picks the black apple because they want a risk, they want a change, something different - and that’s good.

Monzo will need to, at some point, break the mold of what every bank has done before them. They’ll need to explore completely different options and push boundaries. Eventually.

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120

I think all the paid-for features should be enhancements of a free feature, not replacing them. For example:

Free: Pay in cheques by post, you pay for the stamp
Monzo Plus: Free to deposit cheques by post, or by photo imaging through the app

Free: Plastic debit card
Monzo Plus: Metal debit card

Free: £1 Paypoint charge for every cash pay-in
Monzo Plus: One free cash pay-in a month, then discounted rate for each one after that

Free: £200 fee-free cash withdrawals abroad per month
Monzo Plus: £400 fee-free cash withdrawals abroad per month

Free: Access to different savings pots
Monzo Plus: Access to different savings pots, with automatic switching to the one with the highest interest rate

Free: Lost/stolen cards replaced by post within 5 days
Monzo Plus: Free spare card to instantly activate if one is lost/stolen

Free: Overdraft at 50p a day when you use it
Monzo Plus: Overdraft at 40p a day when you use it

Free: One debit card number across the board
Monzo Plus: Unlimited disposable virtual card numbers for safer online shopping

Free: Freeze your card manually any time
Monzo Plus: Optional automatic card freezing if it’s used somewhere that you’re not

Free: One Free user every month wins the cost of one of their purchases back (up to £50)
Monzo Plus: One in every 1000 Monzo Plus users every month win the cost of one of their purchases back (up to £100)

Free: Two Monzo users can make a joint account
Monzo Plus: Two Monzo users can make a joint account, plus have up to 3 ‘kids cards’ with pre-set weekly/monthly spending limits from the same account (with instant in-app approval of higher purchases in emergencies)

When you start to think like this, no functionality is taken away from free users, but you get a set of compelling “premium” service enhancements that would easily be worth a few quid a month - from the above example:

Bill’s Monzo Plus Package:

  • Free to deposit cheques by post, or by photo imaging through the app
  • Metal debit card
  • One free cash pay-in a month, then discounted rate for each one after that
  • £400 fee-free cash withdrawals abroad per month
  • Access to different savings pots, with automatic switching to the one with the highest interest rate
  • Free spare card to instantly activate if one is lost/stolen
  • Overdraft at 40p a day when you use it
  • Unlimited disposable virtual card numbers for safer online shopping
  • Optional automatic card freezing if it’s used somewhere that you’re not
  • One in every 1000 Monzo Plus users every month win the cost of one of their purchases back (up to £100)
  • Two Monzo users can make a joint account, plus have up to 3 ‘kids cards’ with pre-set weekly/monthly spending limits from the same account (with instant in-app approval of higher purchases in emergencies)

Which begins to sound quite compelling, without ‘taking anything away’.

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