Emma Pockets/Pots 🇬🇧 - 4.97% AER

[edoardomoreni]

@tom11

Of course it’s fair to offer whatever interest rate you guys want, it’s a free market. What I’m not a fan of as a subscriber is advertising that rate but it’s actually only available to people paying £15/month. It really wasn’t clear prior to sign up that was going to be the case.

We can review this, thanks for the feedback.

[grant.m]

2.86% easy access with Zopa

[cmsd2]

sonia. currently 3.4%

[Gaoler]

I hate the “pay us x a month and unlock x rate of interest” model. It makes no sense. Santander isn’t exactly the most ethical partner either.

All in all, a feature to be ignored

[edoardomoreni]

You might have seen this already, but we are running a promotion and giving away £1k for a lucky customer that deposits at least £100 before the 9th of February.

[Andy]

Why hasn’t Emma Saving integrated with Emma? Created a pot but they’re not appearing under Save tap with my other savings accounts. Missing a trick here?!

[edoardomoreni]

It’s coming in the next few weeks. We need to adapt the graphs so the balances are plotted.

[tom11]

Have given this a go and must be honest that it’s a bit odd.

• I know you mentioned that showing savings balance is coming but it’s so strange to have this missing at launch! Watching my savings balance go down because I’ve added money to an Emma pot is strange
• The whole process is quite cumbersome - add money to your savings balance, wait for it to come through, then open a pot, then add it to the pot, then wait for that (it actually took a few days with my money missing somewhere in the ether in the meantime - was this because I did it at the weekend?) - and in reverse to withdraw. Unfortunately this is the least ‘easy access’ of any savings account I’ve held
• The interest rates just aren’t competitive unfortunately

I’ll be sticking to using Emma as an aggregator for the apps that offer a better savings product I think. On a positive note the UI is very user friendly and I like the ‘earned interest’ marker

[edoardomoreni]

@tom11

• I know you mentioned that showing savings balance is coming but it’s so strange to have this missing at launch! Watching my savings balance go down because I’ve added money to an Emma pot is strange

This is coming out in the next 10 days.

We should also be able to raise rates on Monday.

As our panel of banks becomes bigger, we’ll be able to bring the highest rate to Emma. This, of course, excludes the fake ones that last a few months and are just marketing.

[edoardomoreni]

@tom11

• The whole process is quite cumbersome - add money to your savings balance, wait for it to come through, then open a pot, then add it to the pot, then wait for that (it actually took a few days with my money missing somewhere in the ether in the meantime - was this because I did it at the weekend?) - and in reverse to withdraw. Unfortunately this is the least ‘easy access’ of any savings account I’ve held

This works just like in any bank/fintech that offers interest via partners.

You put money in your main balance and transfer it to a pot. Since the money goes out to the bank, if you try to withdraw, you need to wait for a day or two, depending on the day/time.

We’d love to make this realtime, but we need a bit more funding (or subscribers) to anticipate the money and make the withdrawal process instant.

Revolut does this, but they have an incentive - since the customer is likely to spend that money on their card or purchase something in the app. If you check Monzo, they make you wait.

[Nate]

@edoardomoreni

If you check Monzo, they make you wait.

I’m with Monzo and I don’t have to wait to transfer money to or from the pots to the main account. That’s instant for both personal and business. Or am I missing the point of what you’ve said here? If you mean from a savings account, that may be true as savings accounts are offered by 3rd parties currently with higher interest and money would need to be moved from one provider to another. I treat that as a separate pot so haven’t had the need to transfer that to a different pot with a lower interest rate.

[Banksmart]

My understanding is that interest are paid daily, I’ve opened mine for over a week but my interest has yet to be put into my interest pot?

[edoardomoreni]

Hi @Banksmart, interest should show in a separate pot called “Earned Interest”. If you don’t see any it might be the balance is not high enough to show at least £0.01 or the money has not been deposited in an easy access pot (the interest ones). If it’s not the case, just ping live chat, we can help from there.

[edoardomoreni]

Hey @Nate, yes you have to wait for interest pots: https://monzo.com/help/budgeting-overdrafts-savings/withdraw-savings-pot

[Nate]

Yes, these are for the savings pots not the Monzo regular pots. I thought that was the case. These are accounts held with Paragon or NorthOak which get better interest. As it’s a separate provider, I’m not surprised it isn’t instant.

I think the regular pots are at the standard current account interest which are instant (passed to the main account). Still handy to ringfence money you know will come out at a later date but I guess in terms of this thread, the Emma pots are on par with the Paragon/NorthOak pots mentioned above.

[edoardomoreni]

Yes, we have instant and easy access. The latter have interest but are slower because we use third party banks.

[tom11]

@edoardomoreni

This works just like in any bank/fintech that offers interest via partners

The difference with Emma is that when I withdraw the money from a pot to my Emma savings ‘balance’ I can’t spend it, and again have to wait a second time to withdraw it from that to be able to spend it. So there’s an extra layer of inconvenience and waiting versus the other fintech you mentioned.

Am I also right in thinking that any money not specifically locked in an interest generating pot is NOT fscs protected?

I tried to withdraw from a pot on Friday, and I am still unable to withdraw the money from my Emma balance today - I was told I will have to wait until 6pm. And as far as I’m aware it’s now stuck there unprotected. Not ideal!

[edoardomoreni]

@tom11

The difference with Emma is that when I withdraw the money from a pot to my Emma savings ‘balance’ I can’t spend it, and again have to wait a second time to withdraw it from that to be able to spend it. So there’s an extra layer of inconvenience and waiting versus the other fintech you mentioned.

This will change, as in we’ll have a way to spend it at some point.

@tom11

Am I also right in thinking that any money not specifically locked in an interest generating pot is NOT fscs protected?

Yes, it’s ring-fenced like any e-money. You can check the terms for more. We use CurrencyCloud.

@tom11

I tried to withdraw from a pot on Friday, and I am still unable to withdraw the money from my Emma balance today - I was told I will have to wait until 6pm. And as far as I’m aware it’s now stuck there unprotected. Not ideal!

This also follows everything advertised and mentioned above. We get the money from the bank on the next working day, usually late afternoon.

[Vladanm999]

I was wondering why the interest is set to a whole separate pot for the save feature. I think it is more annoying having to manually move interest back into that savings pot it should just automatically add itself to the pot that the interest is earnt from, in essence, it should work like every other savings account. Or at the very least have a toggle so the user can decide whether to have the interest moved to a separate pot or into the account it was generated from.

[edoardomoreni]

It was a short cut to accelerate development.

If you have 20 interest pot, all the interest goes in one.

We have plans to change it in the future.