The Monzo hacks and features you need most this festival season

Festival season’s finally here! Whatever event you’re off to, here’s how you and your friends can get the most out of Monzo this summer 🌞

Festivals can be expensive. It’s better to start budgeting ahead of time so you’ve got plenty of cash to enjoy yourself with when the date comes around. By creating a Pot nice and early you can keep money separate from your main balance. In other words, you’re less likely to spend it and leave yourself low on funds.

You can even add an image of your choice to keep your eyes on the prize.

If you buy tickets as a pair or a group you’ll generally save money by paying one booking fee. Instead of each paying a percentage on your tickets.

You can then easily request the money from your friends using our split the bill feature. Just tap on the booking transaction and scroll down. Then tap Split the bill and select the friends you want to split it with.

Be wary about buying festival tickets online though. Last year, on average victims lost £365 each due to ticket fraud.

Once you’re at the festival, you can use this to divide up rounds at the bar and any food you buy. As well as – and this might be the most important one – withdraw money as a group to cut down on expensive festival cash machine fees 💸

Some mates never board a plane without a plastic wallet, labelled and neatly filed with important booking documents. Other mates – and we all have at least one – will leave their ticket under the sofa or on the shuttle bus to the site 🤷‍♂️

By adding your receipts to transactions in the Monzo app you keep any important references or booking numbers safe in your phone. Just open a transaction from the Home screen and tap Add receipt to take a photo or choose one direct from your phone library.

The organised get their kicks out of being more organised, and the unorganised get into the festival. Everyone’s a winner 🏆

This one’s great whether you’re going as a pair or a larger group. By creating a Shared Tab for the festival you can keep track of how much you’re owed, and how much you owe others.

You can create one long before the festival to add bigger purchases like tents, travel or accommodation. Once you’re there, you can add rounds of drinks or whatever else you buy to create one neat place for the group’s spending.

Just go to Payments, select Share in the top right of the screen and tap Create a new tab.

If you’re headed overseas then Monzo can help you there too. You can use your card anywhere in the world. You don’t need to tell us you’re going away, just pack your bags and go ✈️

When you’re there, you can withdraw up to £200 from foreign cash machines every 30 days for free (there’s a 3% charge after that). And, we don’t add any fees or charges – or mark up the exchange rate – when you spend with your card.

Save yourself the stress of fishing out your card in long queues and pay using your phone. You can add your Monzo card to Apple Pay and Google Pay in a matter of seconds.

Once you have, you can pay for stuff quickly and easily, freeing up more time for funner things 💃

We’ve already covered tracking spending using bill splitting and Shared Tabs. But there are other ways you can pay and get paid by someone.

Nearby Friends lets you pay anyone near to you without needing their phone number. It works using Bluetooth and lets you pay people back instantly. Go to Payments and tap the Nearby Friends icon next to the New Contact icon.

Pay and get paid by anyone using just a link. Again, you don’t need to know their phone number or bank details and they don’t need to know yours. Just tap Payments, choose whether you’re paying or requesting money from someone and then choose to do it by sending them a link.

Your card glows under neon light, which is handy when you’re in a rave 😎

Let’s face it, it’s easy to forget about your valuables when you’re partying all day and night. But if you do lose your card, we’ve made it really easy to freeze it so no one can spend your money ❄️

The second you realise you don’t have your card, open the Monzo app, go to Account and tap Freeze to block it. If you get your card back, just defrost it to start spending again as normal.