You may know Monzo for its hot coral bank card – but there are plenty of nifty features within its app that can help you manage your money better
From getting paid early, to managing your pension, one Monzo insider has revealed all the clever features you may not realise are available in your banking app.
The Mirror caught up with Andy Smart, chief product officer at Monzo, shortly after the digital bank swept the British Bank Awards 2025, winning Best Bank, Best Banking App and Best Children’s Financial Provider.
“We spend a lot of time building things that I think most banks don’t really steer towards,” says Andy, when I ask what makes Monzo different to its bricks and mortar rivals.
“I’ve been at Monzo for nine years and I would have given you the same answer nine years ago and we just built on that over time.
“The overall summary of that is that we really live our mission. Monzo’s mission is to make money work for everybody, and that really comes through in everything we do.
”A lot of the way we design products and features, is we design them for customers who are both just starting out in their financial lives or just getting a foot on the ladder, as well as customers who are maybe a little bit more experienced.”
Here, we round up some of the best features in Monzo that can help you manage your money better.
Get paid early
If payday still feels ages away, then you can request Monzo pay your salary one day early. There are no fees for this service and the money is normally paid at 4pm one business day early.
“I really love get paid early. I think the only bank in the UK that does that, and it’s a universal appeal,” says Andy.
“It doesn’t matter what you’re earning, the benefit of getting your salary just a little bit earlier still feels really, really good, almost like an endorphin moment.”
Sort your salary
Monzo also has a salary sorter feature, which divides your incoming pay packet or other payments into different pots – for example, for savings, bills, or spending money.
In order to do this, you need to have your salary paid into your Monzo account, plus pots already set up, ready for the app to divide your money into.
“One thing I think is possibly sometimes not as talked about, is that we have a tool to let you sort your salary,” says Andy.
“Good savings habits and good principles around saving is, you pay yourself first, so you put that money aside and you don’t spend it, or you decide, I need this much for bills, or this much for saving, and this much to go towards my holiday next month.”
Monzo pensions
Monzo can now help you track down your pensions and consolidate them into one place. Pensions can get lost really easily, especially if you’ve had a lot of jobs or moved address often.
In order for Monzo to find your pensions, you need to provide information about your previous employment. This feature isn’t available to all customers just yet, but you can register for updates.
There is a platform fee of 0.45% – 0.35% for Monzo Perks and Max subscribers – and 0.18% fund fee.
“We found that there was a real problem in the UK, in particular where customers weren’t really thinking about their retirement early on,” says Andy.
“Like any savings journey, the earlier you start, the much easier it is, because you have the benefit of time and compounding to support you.
“And so what we wanted to do there was not necessarily convince people to start throwing all their money into their pension overnight, because we realised that’s not what people are going to do, but to give people a level of visibility of how they’re doing.”
Round up
If you find saving tricky, there is a feature which rounds up your transactions to the nearest pound, and then Monzo puts the extra money away for you.
For example, if you bought something for 70p, Monzo would round it up to £1 and put that extra 30p into a savings or investment pot.
“You haven’t thought deeply about where you spend that 30p, but now it’s going to be invested for you – it’s in the stock market and growing,” says Andy.
“One in five Monzo customers are using round ups, so it’s one of the most adopted features across the business.”
1p savings challenge
Monzo became the first bank to offer a fully automated 1p savings challenge within its app last year. The principle of the 1p savings challenge is simple.
You start by saving just 1p on January 1, then you increase this amount by 1p each day going forward – so 2p on January 2 and 3p on January 3, and so on.
The most amount you’ll put away on a single day is on December 31, where you’ll save £3.65. Complete the challenge, and you would have saved £670 over the year.
Instead of having to physically put coins in a jar, or remember to move the money across to a separate bank account, what Monzo has done is automated the process, so the app will move the money across into a savings pot for you.
“It gives people all sorts of ways to start saving for the first time,” says Andy. “Or with investing, we help customers start investing with £1, which everyone can get started with £1, they can try that out and experience it for the first time.
“Whereas if you compare that to other platforms, you might see a £500 minimum or something like that, which is a real barrier to a lot of customers.”
Scam protection
Monzo has a “call status” feature so people can see if they’re currently in a call with Monzo. If the “call status” shows Monzo is not on the phone to them, the customer is urged to hang up and report the attempted fraud.
If the person on the other end of the line is from Monzo, then the “call status” should show as “talking to you now”.
“The fact that our bank is our app, we can detect when you’re on the phone, when you’re in the app. That’s something that your phone provides the ability to do that,” says Andy.
“So if we detect that you’re on the phone and you’re on the phone to Monzo, we can show you that in the app to reassure you that you are actually genuinely speaking to a member of our staff, and that this is a safe conversation for you to have.”
Gambling block
Monzo has an optional gambling block tool, which can be useful if you want help with gambling. How it works is, the app tracks transactions that are tagged with a gambling merchant category code.
“It’s not something we loudly promote as its specific to customers who need it – but again, that was another sort of industry first for us,” says Andy.
“We don’t make any money from it, but the impact it has on society, the impact it has on our customers and their lives, is incredibly huge. If we can help somebody overcome a gambling addiction through a very simple tool in the product, that’s life changing.”
