As a heavy Monzo user I find this a disappointing product launch, I wonāt be upgrading.
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Unless you really want to sync with google sheets and have custom categories I canāt really see how this beats other accounts out there? Credit checks can be done for free (and are also fairly useless), you can balance check other accounts in the apps of traditional banks. I donāt see how Monzo has anything special compared to what else is out there.
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It looks like the vast majority of those happy with Monzo Plus are employees/ex employeesā¦ 
It looks like the vast majority of those happy with Monzo Plus are employees/ex employeesā¦
Hereās hoping we donāt have the same scenario with Freetrade Alpha!
Not long to waitā¦
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Very unpopular opinion here by the sounds of other posts, but I think this is a big leap for Monzo as a business, not a setback or failure as some suggest.
Just because they are not offering you Ā£10 of stuff for Ā£5 and you donāt see how it can benefit you as a user, it does not mean that it isnāt a smart business move and it wonāt be a successful venture.
With this product they are trying to sell Ā£1 for Ā£5 (because they want to make a profit) and I reckon they will be successful as they are appealing to a small portion of users who 1) want to support them becoming a sustainable business and will give Ā£5 a month for very little tangible returns, 2) they want the best visibility/control/access to the latest and best features, and 3) want exclusivity and a different card to show off to people.
That is not a product for most rational people who weigh up what each feature is worth to them and decide whether they can benefit financially (I assume most freetrade users who discuss investments have a strong grasp of value and are more likely to be in this group), but there will still be a fair amount of people in the other group who might be happy paying Ā£5 for a marginally better product.
The most important thing for them is that they have shipped something that generates real revenue which has been met relatively favourably by the community (who were disgusted by the previous iterations). They now have huge scope to improve the value proposition going forwards and edge it further so that more users feel what they are getting is worth the money. Maybe they will even push it far enough at some point so that those rational people who need to see Ā£5.01 of direct value before they will spend Ā£5.00 will sign up as well.
Pure speculation here, but i reckon they will very easily be doing about 100k subs within the first months from the die hard fans, which equates to Ā£6m a year of income at very little cost to them. Thatās a great base for them to build from instead of being at the mercy of collapsing venture capital markets.
They will then push the value proposition forwards, and I reckon when/if they hit 10m users in the next couple of years, they will be having at least a million subs in the UK alone, let alone the US.
If it were a listed company, i think this would have shot upwards very sharply yesterday as fears of an unsustainable cash guzzling business inching towards insolvency begin to evaporate.
Easily worth Ā£2bn again if they do get 100k users subscribed. All imho of course.
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Agree with your points.
Revolut isnāt at all a good comparison at all - itās not a full bank and Revolut runs the risk in many ways overwhelming users with features in my opinion. Iāve got accounts with a couple of legacy banks and Iāve had Revolut and Starling accounts - for me Monzo is by the far the best interface, and best in terms of ease of use.
I think some parts of Monzo Plus are quite cleverly done - Virtual cards are not something which the mass of users are aware of, or use at the moment. In my opinion this may nudge users to bring more spend over to Monzo, as especially for subscriptions it can be frustrating if a card expires and then thereās bounce back from various subscriptions, therefore users may bring transactions into Monzo from Credit Cards to help manage this, thus brining in more interchange revenue (Note: Iāve not yet used Revolutās VC feature).
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Without me googling, can you explain the benefits of a virtual card?
In the time it takes for someone to reply, you could have googled it 
Virtual cards are great for when you want to separate card details between vendors; letās say you want to put all of your purchases via Amazon on one card to better track spending.
If your physical card gets stolen, since your virtual cards are separate, you wonāt have to update your payment details across all of the places you were using your existing card.
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And theyāre great to sign up to those subscription trials that ask for a card in advance and forget to cancel. Generate card, sign up to trial, delete card. 
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Iām an investor in Monzo so have an interest in its success. The Monzo Plus product doesnāt seem attractive to me or value for money. It bundles a lot of features that competitors already offer for free.
However, from a pure business perspective itās probably a good play. Theyāll likely get a decent sign-up rate and can add another source of income in the journey to profitability.
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Iām an elderly millennial that ditched the legacy banks and moved my current account over to Monzo - I donāt see them as a gimmick at all, simply a bank without any branches and with a great appā¦ as opposed to the legacy banks with fewer and fewer branches and generally appalling apps and the occasional total loss of service for customers including their debit cards etc
Iām quite tempted by this new product. I currently use Money Dashboard to view all my accounts in one place. Itās free (they mine your data) and I know other people use Emma - also free but with a Premium tier of about Ā£4.99 a month. Monzoās new service seems to replace both of these.
If Freetrade would show up as a Savings/Investment account within Monzo and there was a function to send your Roundups (ie. Spent Ā£0.88p with Monzo, the 22p gets pushed somewhere) to Freetrade instead of a pot then that would be incredible.
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Or I could just wait for someone as helpful as you to explain, then itās written down in case anyone else was wondering about them too! 
Sounds interesting - not sure itās worth the Ā£5 a month for me, but can see the attraction of the extra features for some people
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Monzo would have a new plus member if they had freetrade showing in the app and roundups that could go tk my freetrade account! Iād pay 10 quid for that let alone 5. The extra fiver would be covered by a change in my shopping habits that would incenticise me to spend less on crap things and roundups would keep me saving.
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Saying yeah but I can get all of this for free elsewhere may be correct but you canāt get it within Monzo elsewhere 
ā¦ And even then is it really the same selection of features in the same way? Just ticking off feature by feature is really a good indicator of the value of the product - some legacies banks do most of what Monzo does for free yet their UI are not as good and they spend a lot of screen space trying to up sell you loans and mortgages which often then take you to a webpage (not a good user experience)
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I also use Money Dashboard. Monzo allows you to split transactions by categories which MoneyDB doesnāt do; for example, in Monzo+ you can tag a Sainsburyās spend with Ā£40 on groceries and Ā£20 on Entertainment (alcohol). Unfortunately, there is not yet any Amex integration (although coming soon) and I prefer to budget on my PC so itās not ideal.
I purchased Monzo+ knowing that there isnāt enough value for the current price but I am a big fan. rartherās post above rings true, I know Monzo are having monetary problems and I will happily support them because I am brainwashed
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I like the product and have signed up. Iāve already set up custom categories (Investments, pets etc), set up a virtual card, can see my Santander and RBS accounts, and my new card will be arriving in the next couple of days. My wife and I can take out Ā£800 between us on holiday later this month and I leave enough money in the account that Iāll accrue Ā£20 in interest in the next year. Absolutely happy to pay Ā£5 a month for all this.
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So, in spite of my earlier comments. Iāve ended up signing up now myself. Why? No idea really. I guess I was intrigued and for Ā£5 a month its cheap enough to try it out and see if it does benefit me. I like the idea of the Google sheets interaction having seen some examples of what can be done with it so Iāll be looking at doing that.
I wouldnāt pay any more than Ā£5 though and may still cancel after the 3 months.
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Itās amazing what a competent CEO can do in such a short amount of time! I feel like the termination of Tom from the board and him āstepping downā after the down round couldnāt have come sooner.
TS Anil seems to be really whipping Monzo back into shape and leading the company properly. I donāt think Monzo Plus is great this time around either, but at least thereās some buzz about it. Great job by TS! I hope he brings Monzo back from what looked like an imminent collapse.
On a related point. Does anyone know if thereās an IFTTT that can move money from a monzo pot each month and send to Freetrade?
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Unless you have insider knowledge, I think itās perhaps a bit too soon to be giving all the credit for the new Plus to TS Anil and none to Tom, or any of the other senior staff members involved.
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