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Comment by gadders | Hacker News Reader

You can tell they are starting to optimise for revenue rather than user satisfaction, though. They recently prevented you from loading your Monzo card via another debit card.

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You mean they recently stopped you using a debit card to pay money into your bank account? Why would you do that? If you want to move money between banks you can do so instantly with faster payments.

I don't say that to be facetious, I think there's a difference of perspective here which is only going to widen if you think they are a prepaid card. They set out to make a bank, and started with prepaid cards, but that was never the end goal, it was just a way to test out the UI before getting a banking license, so expecting people to pay money in as you would to any other bank account makes perfect sense. This is not a prepaid card you load up, it's a bank account, and they don't want users to think of it as a prepaid card.

So I think their user satisfaction for people who want a bank account is doing well - as evidenced by their new customer growth. Can't wait to see them launch in the US market as it is also ripe for disruption and I think they have the scale and ambition to do well there.

I think the comment was around reduced usuability. It used to be if you wanted to move money into a Monzo account, you could do in all in-app, via a linked debit card.

This provided a nice usuable way to get money into the account from a "legacy" bank that doesn't have a good mobile story.

Now if you have Monzo + a legacy account (as many do) you have to go log-in to the legacy account to move money to Monzo.

Ofc once you go "full monzo" that's not a problem any more but it's still early days for that and Monzo have had enough service glitches to make people a little nervous of committing to having it as their only account, I think.

Other banks don't offer that (top ups via card), and I don't think it's something you should expect of a bank account - it was always a stop-gap. If you're using it for spending regularly and don't want to switch, just set up a standing order for a bit of money each week/month to try it out. I think as they want to become a bank this is part of that process - their focus needs to be on those who use it as their main account.

Personally I switched almost a year ago (when they introduced CA), and am happy with that choice so far - kept my old bank just in case but haven't needed it. Re outages many banks have had major outages recently, far more than Monzo... They had a few glitches early on (late last year), but I'm fairly confident of their ability to scale now.

It indeed isn't a common feature of bank accounts.

However it is a feature that Monzo had, which was easy to use and they got rid of it (IIRC due to the costs of providing it), which decreased usability, which I think was the original point the poster made...

It didn't decrease usability at all for those who use it as a bank account. It's certainly not a good prepaid card account but there are plenty of those.

True. And that's also the endgoal of Monzo: to be your main bank.

indeed. But Monzo is better than most (all?) banks and this is what people used to top up their cards before they removed the feature.

Wonder if they considered offloading the transaction fees onto users. I'd certainly pay for the convenience and would have continued using Monzo (Barclays copied the card freeze and atm locking so no need for Monzo, esp. with this).

Technically, as a workaround, you can create a monzo.me link and then make payments of up to £100 to yourself.

Nice hack, thanks!

I've been paying my wages in for about a year now.

Its been a flawless experience and I'll never look back.

From a technical perspective I think it could be easy to believe that because they're a startup your money is in someway less safe, or the service less reliable.

But I actually think that because of the sheer technical debt old banks struggle with (they're ticking time bombs on the inside) the opposite might be true.

Speaking as someone who used to top up by debit all the time, a couple of clicks in the app was far easier than switching apps, re-authenticating with my main bank and then making the payment. I don't blame them for doing it - apparently it was costing around £4 million in fees - but it's definitely harmed the UX unless you want to go full Monzo.

Sure, that sounds painful if that is what you were used to. Just out of curiosity, why did you not set up a standing order? If you're using it regularly surely this would work just as well? Seems annoying to have to constantly top it up with small amounts. Was that a commitment too far?

When I was transitioning I did a v. small standing order first for a few months and used it for spending, then upped the amount, then eventually switched over salary, direct debits etc.

For beta user, back when Monzo wasn't yet a bank account, the only to put money on it was to pay by card.

This was a habit that a lot of us had taken, and as described above, it was just easier to do all in one place: - Go check your monzo app - Notice you're low on fund - Top up using your card

A lot of us haven't switched completely, because why would you when other current account can give you travel insurance, small % of interest, etc.

> For beta user, back when Monzo wasn't yet a bank account, the only to put money on it was to pay by card.

This is incorrect - it was possible for a long time to top-up via bank transfer. Certainly during beta. It simply required using a shared sort code/account number with a specific numeric reference which tied the payment to your account.

It wasn't as instant as it is now (with Faster Payments), but it was still definitely possible.

I've pretty much stopped using Monzo after they removed the card topups.

I used to use it all the time while traveling, and usually top up on the spot when the funds on the account run out and I needed to pay for something.

Bank transfers really doesn't work for that use case.

Now I'm using Revolut for the same purpose (they still allow card top ups), not much difference to Monzo although I really, really like Monzo customer support.

If you liked it, I'd really recommend the built in current account transfer service.

I like it but not enough to change my current account

I already have a bank account I'm happy with. I specifically got the Monzo card as a prepaid card to use when spending abroad, which is what they originally sold as one of their key benefits.

to answer your question, you used to be able to "top up" your Monzo card directly from the app. It was really quick if you needed more money on the card. As someone else commented elsewhere, most people use it to pay for things, but still use another more ancestral bank to get their paycheck.

Now you need to go in your bank's app, log-in there, go through many menus (because banks which are not Monzo or Revolut have no clue about UX) in order to send money to your Monzo card.

It's still free, and instantaneous. It's just more cumbersome now.

They also removed the "no fee withdrawals abroad" and now you pay a pretty substantial fee (3%) above 200GBP per month. I might be wrong on these numbers but this is what I remember.

Sorry, that probably wasn't clear. I was trying to say this was a deliberate choice as they want to be a bank, not a prepaid card.

If they are your bank you don't need to add money periodically with a card.

The fee for withdrawals abroad is unfortunate but perhaps they'll be able to up the limit sometime.

oh yeah definitely, I got used to toping up via Lloyd's app and I'm fully supporting Monzo to grow.

> You mean they recently stopped you using a debit card to pay money into your bank account? Why would you do that?

That's the only way to get money into a Revolut account. That, Apple Pay or a SWIFT transfer which costs a fortune.

Revenue vs user satisfaction isn't entirely a binary choice though. If Monzo offer a feature which costs them a lot but offers user's some convenience, it's a bit of a balancing act to figure out what the convenience is actually worth. Debit card top-ups were costing Monzo millions per year, and seems to me to be only marginally more convenient than a bank transfer.

Debit card payment into a bank account is kind of an odd feature anyway, it seems like a bit of a relic from back when Monzo weren't a fully-fledged bank, and were just offering a prepaid card.

I imagine they are moving away from pre-paid cards, and towards full accounts. The pre-paid cards were just there to get them off the ground, and isn't their main focus anymore.

They recently released a savings "pot" (how they split up money) with interest (1%, provided by another company). Which is a step towards offerings of other banks, and in my book is a step towards user satisfaction.

Moved away - they shut down all the pre-paid cards earlier this year

https://monzo.com/blog/2018/01/18/future-of-prepaid/

Edit: More relevant link: https://monzo.com/blog/2018/04/04/ending-prepaid/

This was costing them millions of pounds a year in fees. Quite a pricey tactic to remove friction of funds flowing in and totally reasonable for them not to sustain it while pre/early revenue.

Edit: Bank transfers are instant in most cases and don’t cost Monzo. So we should do our part to help them if we want something better.

Bank transfers are pretty painful, especially when you need the top-up right away. I would happily pay for the card transaction for the convenience, if it's an unsustainable cost for them.

No, a better future is ahead of us: Monzo as your main bank. So let's pay this little friction price in order to get this better future.

One thing that bothered me more was the fee for withdraw abroads.

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