Hey guys,
we are looking to launch Pockets in Emma very soon.
I was wondering if you had any feedback or experience with apps like Chip, Plum, Monzo that already do this.
Is there anything we can improve on top of that experience? 
You can create/delete pots in Emma. 
We should be able to offer interest as well later on.
You mean to say we would transfer money to Emma/an account in Emma?
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Yes, we can do this with a partner.
Yes, you can top up and withdraw.
Yep,
We are going to start without interest. 
I don’t use Monzo Pots differently to easy access savings accounts at traditional banks: I just have a single interest paying pot rather than multiple pots for budgeting or multiple savings goals. The only reason I would move money from my current account to a pot or savings account is to gain interest.
So Emma Pockets probably unlikely to have appeal for me and am probably not the best person to comment on pots functionality and limitations. That being said I’m not sure there are significant enhancements to be made so may be hard to attract users from banks which already have their own pots/pots-like feature. But I suppose there are still lots of banks that don’t have this functionality.
How much interest?
True, but apart from Monzo/Starling, which a few people use as a primary bank, what other banks have this?
For easy savings savings accounts - any interest will do if its a savings account at the same bank as my current account. If I have any spare money at the end of the month I just put it in my main bank savings account until I decide what to do with it. Better to have in there than my non-interest-paying current account.
I probably only go to the trouble of moving my cash savings to another bank/provider if I would end up earning approximately £30 or more in interest over the year compared to what I would earn keeping it at my main bank. For example, until recently I was getting 0.3% from Monzo whilst the best account on the market was paying approx. 0.55%. For the amount I keep in cash savings this wouldn’t have quite led to a big enough difference for me to bother moving my cash savings to a new account. But Chip have recently provided a way to earn approx. 1% interest (after fees, and also with FSCS protection) so I’ve now moved my cash savings to Chip.
It’s not something I need, so I haven’t really looked. But I suspect not many. I have noticed TSB have them though.
Thinking about this further, I probably would open an Emma-provided savings account for less gain. The two reasons I sometimes avoid opening savings accounts outside Monzo and therefore put up with lower returns are a) lack of access to that savings account within Emma (e.g. Marcus savings account not available whilst Monzo is) and b) not wanting to have yet another login to manage. Since I’m already an Emma user these two concerns wouldn’t be present with an Emma-provided account.
This does raise a bit of a concern though. If other specialist savings providers start making their accounts accessible via open banking there might be a temptation for Emma to avoid connecting to those accounts as this may increase the likelihood users choose to use Emma-provided savings accounts.
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I use pots with Starling and one of my favourite features is round ups of any spending from my account.
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Personally, I’d rather you prioritised improving budgets, analytics and integrations to make this the best financial management app out there.
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Awesome,
yes, we can definitely add roundups as well.
For us, the logic is pretty simple.
We want to provide a way to store money and set some short term / long term goals at first.
Then we’ll add interest on top via a third party provider.
We are happy to do both at the same time. 
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I think this will be a really useful feature. Being able to visually set aside money for holidays or big purchase will help with saving.
Yeah. The biggest drawback is payments in different currencies, eg a VPN service that takes payment in USD (and the bank converts it to £) don’t work with this.
I also make a lot of recurring international transfers and these don’t work either.
Seems like it would be very easy to implement it but they haven’t done, hopefully it will improve in the future.
Also one off payments that are frequent but at irregular times eg if I order a protein powder every time it runs out from their website I’d like those payments to come from the same Pocket even those it’s not setup as a subscription at an exact regular interval.
The ability to connect it to credit card direct debits would be a massive plus too. Then any credit card balance I have I can just stick it into the Pocket and it will take it when the payment is due.
I use Revolut but due to the Pockets not being perfect (still good though) I utilise my other bank account as ‘Pockets’ too for things like regular car payments etc.
Be good to do it all in one place though.
Side note. Revolut has Vaults and Pockets. Vaults are for saving and Pockets for ‘Envelope budgeting’. The Pockets feature is new and the most rare I think only Monzo offers a similar feature. For me these envelope budgeting type Pockets are a game changer even more than simple Savings Pots.
So do you use the Vault for saving up for big things, and then the Pockets for your monthly spending? E.g you might have a pocket for groceries, transport, and then a Vault for Holidays?
I think the pocket idea could be really cool for us. Do you think you’d have a pocket set up for each of your budgeting categories?
I use pots with Starling and love it. I wouldn’t move them out of Starling though.