What do you use your Monzo card for?

ozaz

Sweetcake wrote: »

Heya. I!!!8217;m a big fan of the piggybanking method, and I!!!8217;m thinking of getting a Monzo card, due to its new saving features/applets. But I!!!8217;m not sure exactly what I!!!8217;d use it for as I have a spending account already. What do you use your Monzo card for? Does anyone have two !!!8216;spending!!!8217; accounts? I!!!8217;m thinking of using it as that or a money cushion when I!!!8217;m running low on spending account (maybe?) does anyone do anything similar or have any suggestions?

I do all my spending with my Monzo account except for household bills (I use an account which gives cashback on bills for these) and items which I want section 75 protection on (use a credit card for these).

I do all my saving/investing immediately after my salary comes in (i.e. before any spending) so I don't really have any use for Monzo saving features/applets. Note that Monzo Pots don't pay any interest.

venomx wrote: »

Do any of you guys top up the Monzo account from your main one when you need it ? Or just have it in one lump sum each month

My salary goes into a high-street bank and then I have a number of standing orders setup to direct portions of this to various places. One of these portions is my spending budget, which goes to Monzo.

ozaz

scgf wrote: »

Does this mean the Monzo debit card is online only? Most creditworthy bank customers have offline cards which can still be used if there is no internet access between the merchant and their bank. What about a fuel station where your card is earmarked for £99 (ASDA trial) - do you see this immediately as a debit? I used to bank with Clydesdale and their online banking service showed debits immediately - but some were to check your card status (Amazon does this if you pre-order an item) and no actual debit ensures. Personally I found it a PITA. How does Monzo deal with these scenarios?

I don't believe its online only, although I don't know where to test.
I've never used the card at pay-at-pump terminals.
Hopefully mojo71 or someone else can answer.

venomx

ozaz wrote: »

I don't believe its online only, although I don't know where to test.
I've never used the card at pay-at-pump terminals.
Hopefully mojo71 or someone else can answer.

You can use it anywhere that accepts mastercards and contactless.
Asda, Tesco, Subway, Charity shops etc

ozaz

venomx wrote: »

You can use it anywhere that accepts mastercards and contactless.
Asda, Tesco, Subway, Charity shops etc

The terminals in those places are most likely online terminals. In case its not clear, online in this context is not referring to payment through a website, it's referring to payment through a point of sale terminal that has a live connection to the payment network. I assume the best place to test whether the card works with offline point of sale terminals would be on an Airplane.

Mojo71

The Monzo card is a normal debit card like you get from other providers.

Monzo are a tech company, who's chosen business is banking. Starting from a clean slate, they've had the chance to write their back-end systems (and mobile app software) from scratch. So this is where they are not weighed down with the limitations of decades old banking technology.

This gives them the opportunity to easily introduce new ideas and features, such as instantly displaying transactions, as opposed to the old batch processes used by the old banks which don't update immediately to show up in real-time in your bank account.

What is the OP's definition of "spending money"? Is this for monthly bill payments, direct debits, etc. or just money for spending in shops? I use my Monzo account just for the latter, and keep my legacy account for my bill payments, just because I like to keep the two separate.

With Monzo, there's no need for keeping spreadsheet records, because your transactions show up straight away. Unless the retailer is using an "offline" payment system, but then that would be no different whatever account you use. The point is that once Monzo receive your spending transaction (either straight away or delayed, depending on the retailer's systems), you then get to see that straight away in the mobile app.

I'm aware of issues with things like Pay at Pump (never done that myself), but that's because with older banks, you probably wouldn't have seen the pre-authorised amount (e.g. £99) because by the time it had gone through the system and hit your account, the pre-authorisation would have been reversed and you would see the real amount. With Monzo, I think you see the pre-authorisation in your account straight away, and then it gets "refunded" later, and replaced with the real transaction amount. They may have addressed this to present it differently by now based on user feedback, but I'm unsure.

There is a Monzo community forum for users to discuss anything (problems, suggestions, etc.), and Monzo staff also read and post on the forum. So anything that gets discussed does get read by them, and acted upon where necessary. You, the user, are an important part of "helping them to build the bank of the future". You don't get that sort of interaction with the old banks.

I think Monzo's aim at the moment is to become a proper budgeting and money management tool. You get spending analysis, predicted future spending patterns, the ability to put money into "pots" etc, which is really useful if you're on a tight budget.

So I think it's far more useful than just using as a secondary spare account for loose change. After using it for a few weeks, I made it my main spending account because I found it far more flexible and user-friendly than the limitations of the way traditional bank accounts work. Don't be afraid of something new, you're not going to lose money. They're a proper licenced bank with the £85k protection the same as traditional banks.

https://monzo.com/
https://community.monzo.com/

starM

Do you know if Monzo shows up as an active Current account with any CRAs?

ozaz

starM wrote: »

Do you know if Monzo shows up as an active Current account with any CRAs?

CallCredit only I believe

wiseonesomeofthetime

My finances run the same as ozaz #12