Monzo Team expense cards

What it is

Monzo Team lets you issue additional debit cards to employees, each with its own spending limits and permissions, drawing on the same business account. Spend appears in the app immediately, receipts get attached against the transaction, and the whole lot flows into your accounting software.

It replaces the two systems most small businesses actually use: staff paying on personal cards and claiming back, or one shared company card that nobody can reconcile.

How it actually works

• Up to 15 users on the Team plan, each with defined access.
• Physical or virtual cards per person, with individual limits.
• Receipt capture prompts the cardholder rather than you chasing them — the notification arrives at the moment of spend, which is the only time anyone can be bothered.
• Payment approvals and bulk payments come with the same plan.
• Everything syncs to Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent or Sage.

Who it genuinely helps

• Businesses with three or more people spending money, where personal-card reimbursement has become a monthly ritual.
• Anyone with field staff or tradespeople buying materials, where receipts genuinely go missing.
• Businesses already paying a bookkeeper by the hour to chase and code expenses.

Where it falls short

• £25 a month, Team plan only. There is no cheaper route to it within Monzo.
• 15 user cap. Fine for a small team, not for a growing one.
• Debit, not credit. The money leaves immediately; there is no float and no credit line.
• Nothing here is unique. Dedicated expense platforms do more.

What else does this

Revolut Business offers comparable expense management and spend controls from the Grow plan at £30 a month, with better multi-currency handling if your team spends abroad.

Airwallex goes further again on corporate cards and controls, aimed at companies past the point where a bank account is the right tool.

Dedicated platforms like Pleo and Soldo do more than any bank — per-category rules, mileage, subscriptions, deeper approval flows — and sit on top of whatever account you already have. If expenses are a genuine operational problem rather than an annoyance, a specialist tool beats a bank feature.

Our verdict

Useful when you have the headcount, unremarkable as a product. This is competent, well-integrated expense management that does the ordinary things well. Nothing about it is novel, and both Revolut and the specialist platforms match or beat it.

The maths is simple. At £300 a year it needs to save you more than four or five hours of bookkeeping. With one or two people spending occasionally, it will not. With five people buying materials weekly, it pays for itself several times over.

What tips it for existing Monzo customers is that Team is also the only tier paying 3.25% on savings. If you hold more than about £15,400, the plan justifies itself on interest alone and the expense cards are a free extra — which is a much better reason to upgrade than the cards themselves.

Read our full Monzo review →