What would you say to someone who was thinking about going #FullMonzo?

Letting customers know of issues is an important one!

High street banks still try and deny there is anything wrong, even if thousands of people on Twitter are complaining something’s broken…

Firstly - What’s the worst that could happen?

Secondly - Intant notifications, always knowing exactly what you have left in your account, superb customer service within the app, great for using abroad. Seeing your DD/recuring payments and spending in an easy to read summary. Savings pots including auto rounding, IFTTT. I could go on and on.

I often bore my firends banging on about Monzo had some success but a lot feel like they have some sort of loyalty to their current bank. Don’t know why???

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The only think stopping at me outting all my money in Monzo is the lack of interest rate on the balance.

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I recently switched from one of the major high street banks (I won’t say which one) because it used to take 3 full days for card payments to come off my available balance. With Monzo I hear my phone ping to tell me I’ve spent money before I’ve put the card back in my pocket. I always got the impression my old bank were just trying to squeeze as much money out of me as possible, whereas Monzo actually warns me if I’m going to run out of money.

Switching was much easier than I thought it would be too. I just wish Monzo had been around years ago.

My only gripe is that I can’t deposit cash in my Monzo account yet. At lest not from the last time I asked which was a few weeks ago. Silly you say, in today’s almost cashless environment but the issue does still exist in its minuscule way. Call me pedantic, I won’t hold it against you.

Cash deposits is being looked at in conjunction with another provider. Not dates or anything yet but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it before the end of the year.

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For me, I totally agree with what everyone has said above, and I use the features as a selling point. But I think the big difference between Monzo and other banks like Starling is this, the community site. The interaction between users and The Bank, the way the community shape the future of the bank and feel listened to. That’s what really differentiates Monzo.

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The point where people seem to warm to the idea is when I say that Monzo is covered by the FSCS protection policy, meaning they’d be protected up to £85k. Most people don’t know this.

The fear of a start-up bank folding is rational, particularly if your salary is entirely what you live on. The underlying need is to feel that your money is safe and accessible.

My suggestion would be to shout about the protection policy a lot more than you already do. If there are other ways you can reassure people their money would be safe if the worst happened, all the better.

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Being able to see your balance, with future expenditure already taken off, is incredibly handy for knowing where you actually are right now.

Instant notifications are a plus, and the app is great.

My wife was sceptical about going full Monzo…

“But we get cashback extras from Halifax!” - I checked and we earnt £3.46 over 5 years. Her card is in the post.

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I’ve kept a Halifax open for that, and for depositing cheques, and taking international payments.

Yes, I love being part of it all.

Only keeping Halifax open for the credit card. Hopefully Monzo will prize me away from that at some point too HINT HINT :wink:

The service is great, the app also what I’m missing is credit card and interest for my savings

I’m on the fence for two reasons:

  1. interest rates on the balance in my Monzo account
  2. the payee management isn’t quite right for me

Monzo is great! I just wish I could make the #FullMonzo leap :smiley:

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I’m on the fence for a different two reasons (btw by going Full monzo I interpret switching the salary over):

  1. App stays in the recents (unsafe) (Android).
  2. No PIN support to open the app. Fingerprint is OK about 80% of the time, but on my device it just won’t work that 20% of the time when you need it the most (I’m on Pixel 2 XL) :persevere:

Until recently, joint accounts would be a another reason. My girlfriend and I nearly switched to Starling! :open_mouth:

Cheers

What do you mean by this?

My traditional bank closes the app as soon as you stop using it, and you need to re-authenticate if you re-open it. Monzo app stays in memory without the need to re-authenticate. You can kill the activity manually but it should do it automatically. If someone snatches your phone when it’s unlocked and you’ve used the app 20 minutes ago, that’s bad news for your balance.

Not really as they can’t do anything without entering a pin or Touch ID depending what you have set up. They can see your transactions but can’t move any money out of the account

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Added friction. I hate this so much. Right, I’ve opened the app and authenticated because I need to transfer some money - oh, shoot, I wrote the account number down but not the sort code, I’ll have to switch back to Gmail and copy that down.

And now I need to reauthenticate again despite having being out of the app for seconds at most. Ugh.

I can switch out of Monzo to get the information I forgot and switch right back no problem. Brilliant. This doesn’t get in the way of what I’m doing at all!

I’m standing in the middle of the supermarket with a basket of food and then I find myself wondering if I’ve got enough in my account to cover that premium range microwave meal or if I’ll have to head for the value aisle instead; I can unlock my phone and check the Monzo app in seconds!

If someone snatches my phone when it’s unlocked there’s far more to worry about than an unlocked Monzo app. Primarily, email. They can do all sorts of damage with my email. Any social media apps are also problematic, if you leave Facebook in that’s another easy attack or research vector, for example.

Monzo, on the other hand? At worst, they know my balance and they can see my transactions. But without my card PIN, they can’t move any of my money anywhere.

Extra locks on Monzo are not security, they’re friction. The security is on the phone lock. So I don’t leave my phone unlocked when I’m not using it, the auto-lock timer is set to a very short - some might say inconveniently short - time, and I never ever let people who aren’t me touch my phone unsupervised.

That’s good enough.

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