What does MoneySavingExpert say about Monzo vs Chase?

Affiliate disclosure: this post contains a Monzo referral link. If you use it, we both get a mystery reward of £20, £50 or £100. It doesn't change anything about your account.

If you read MoneySavingExpert's digital banking guide (opens in new tab) looking for a clear "Monzo or Chase" verdict, you won't find one. What you'll find is a split: Chase is positioned as the cashback pick, Monzo as the budgeting pick, and MSE explicitly suggests holding both. This post walks through what MSE actually says, the maths behind their position on Chase cashback, and where my own Monzo vs Chase comparison agrees and disagrees.

What MSE actually says about each bank

MSE's best digital bank accounts (opens in new tab) guide groups Monzo, Chase and Starling together as the leading challengers, and hands each of them a job rather than a rank:

• Chase: "Best for cashback." 2% on groceries, transport, fuel, and now restaurants, cafes and takeaways. Capped at £20/month. Plus 4.5% AER for 12 months on the boosted Chase Saver and 5% AER on the separate round-up account.
• Monzo: "Best for budgeting." Pots, salary sorting, spending targets and real-time notifications. MSE highlights Monzo's user-polling results: 80% rated it "great" for usability and 85% rated it "great" for features, the highest feature rating in their digital bank comparison.
• Starling: "Best for overseas ATM use." No withdrawal limits abroad (Monzo's free account caps at £200/month outside the EEA).

Martin Lewis himself doesn't single out one as the outright winner. His on-record framing is closer to "the best account is the one that fits how you actually bank" (what Martin Lewis says about Monzo goes through the polling behind those scores). MSE's structural advice across these guides is consistent: the answer to "which digital bank?" is usually "one of them as your main account and one of them alongside it for the perks you'd otherwise miss."

Why MSE points at Chase specifically for cashback

The reason Chase is the cashback pick rather than Monzo is simple: Monzo's free account doesn't pay cashback at all. Monzo's paid tiers offer Billsback, but that's a lottery (random monthly payout on a household bill, with most months returning small amounts) rather than guaranteed cashback. For predictable earnings on everyday spending, the only meaningful comparison among the digital banks MSE covers is Chase.

Chase's cashback structure (opens in new tab), as MSE flags it:

• 2% cashback on groceries (most supermarkets), everyday transport (TfL, rail tickets, fuel), restaurants, cafes, takeaways and public EV charging points. Taxis, supermarket concessions such as Argos, restaurants inside other venues, alcohol specialists and home EV charging are all excluded
• Capped at £20/month (i.e. 2% cashback on the first £1,000 of qualifying spending in those categories), with no cashback outside the UK and Channel Islands or in any currency other than sterling
• Ongoing, not a 12-month intro. Chase's own FAQ says customers on the Everyday Cashback offer could earn 2% "from 1 July 2026"
• You qualify by making 15+ card payments or Direct Debits in the previous calendar month and holding £1,000+ across your Chase saver accounts every single day of it. Standing orders, transfers and refunds don't count towards the 15, and current-account or round-up balances don't count towards the £1,000

MSE's framing is balanced. They flag both the upside (guaranteed money on spending you'd do anyway, capped but real) and the caveat that most households never reach the £20/month maximum, because most households don't spend that much in those categories specifically.

The cashback maths MSE encourages you to run

MSE's standing line on cashback is to count only what's guaranteed, after any fee or behaviour change, and to price your own spending rather than the headline cap:

The cap matters. The 2% headline rate sounds like an unlimited boost on your spending; in practice it's capped at £240/year, and you only hit that ceiling if a) you spend at least £1,000/month in the qualifying categories specifically, b) you remember to use the Chase card rather than your phone wallet pointed at a different card, and c) you clear the monthly criteria (15+ payments and £1,000 kept in a Chase saver). For most UK households the realistic cashback is £150 to £240 per year, with the upper end being homes with two cars, regular rail commuting, eating out and a major weekly shop on the Chase card.

Where my position differs from MSE's framing

MSE's coverage is even-handed and built for a wide audience. My Monzo vs Chase comparison takes the same data and lands in a more opinionated place: Monzo as primary, Chase as the cashback card alongside it. The reasons:

• Chase doesn't offer overdrafts or joint accounts. A bank that declines payments when you tap empty isn't suitable as a primary current account for most people. It does now issue a credit card (24.9% p.a. APR representative, variable, meaning the rate most approved applicants get), but that borrows deliberately rather than catching a payment you can't cover. MSE acknowledges the gaps in their feature tables but doesn't lean on them as hard as I would.
• Monzo's budgeting tools are genuinely structural. Salary Sort, pots, spending targets and Bills Pots aren't garnish; they change how money behaves in your account. Once you're using them, switching primary banks means giving them up. MSE's coverage flags this but treats it as a preference rather than a structural advantage.
• The cashback maximum is small next to the savings rate. Chase's £240/year ceiling is meaningful, but the year-one savings boost (4.5% AER on the Chase Saver for 12 months) is often the bigger number on a five-figure savings balance. MSE flags both; I'd weight the savings rate more heavily.

Which account does what, and in what order, is a longer answer than this post needs: I set the whole pairing out in Best second UK bank account to pair with Monzo.

What MSE caveats about both Chase and Monzo

MSE's broader caveats on digital banks apply to both:

• Customer service is app-and-chat only. No phone line, no branches. Both banks struggle on complex cases more than on routine ones.
• Savings rates lose their edge after year one. Chase's headline 4.5% is a 12-month bonus; after that it drops to 2.25%. Monzo's free 2.75% is reasonable but below the best-buy instant-access tables. MSE consistently flags that "top-pick savings usually pay more" in standalone accounts.
• Packaged plans need careful maths. Monzo's Extra (£3/month), Perks (£9/month) and Max (£19/month) only pay off if you'd use the included features. MSE's general advice on paid banking plans applies cleanly.

Should you trust MSE's view here?

On the products, yes. MoneySavingExpert is the UK's largest consumer-finance site, it operates independently of the banks it reviews, and its Monzo scores come from polling its own readers rather than from the banks (what Martin Lewis says about Monzo goes through that methodology). What no guide written for a national audience can do is price your month: whether you have an overdraft to worry about, a joint account to open, and enough spending in Chase's qualifying categories to land anywhere near the realistic range above.

The one thing MSE won't touch is which referral scheme you can actually use, and here the two banks are not symmetrical. Chase's £50 refer-a-friend is invitation-only, and each code works once, so no Chase code published on any website will work for you. Monzo's referral bonus has no invite gate: any customer can pass their link on, and it pays a mystery reward of £20, £50 or £100 to both sides.

MSE on Chase vs Monzo FAQs

Does MoneySavingExpert recommend Chase or Monzo?

MSE doesn't pick an outright winner. Their digital banking guide treats both as leading challenger banks with different strengths: Chase for cashback and the year-one savings bonus, Monzo for budgeting tools and salary sorting. Martin Lewis's framing is "the best account is the one that fits how you actually bank," and MSE's structural recommendation is usually to hold both alongside each other rather than choose one.

How much cashback can you actually earn on Chase?

Chase pays 2% cashback on groceries, transport, fuel, restaurants, cafes, takeaways and EV charging, capped at £20/month, as long as you make 15+ payments and keep £1,000 in a Chase saver each month. The realistic annual cashback for a typical UK household is £150 to £240, depending on how much of your spending falls into the qualifying categories. You only hit the £240/year maximum if you spend £1,000/month specifically on those categories and consistently use the Chase card rather than a phone wallet pointed at a different card.

Why doesn't Monzo offer cashback on the free account?

Monzo's free account is built around budgeting tools (pots, salary sorting, spending targets) rather than transactional perks, and it offers Billsback on the paid tiers: a lottery-style payout on household bills, not guaranteed cashback. Monzo has never published its reasoning. My read: cashback is funded out of interchange, the fee a shop's bank pays your card issuer on every card payment, and that margin is thinner on a free account than a J.P. Morgan-backed rival needs it to be.

Does MSE think you should switch your salary to Chase?

No. MSE's coverage flags Chase's structural gaps (no overdraft, no joint account, no Flex-equivalent borrowing product) and doesn't position it as a primary account for most people. The usual MSE framing is to keep your salary going into a more fully-featured account (Monzo, Starling or a traditional bank) and top up Chase weekly for the qualifying spending categories.

Is Chase or Monzo better for travel?

Neither, on card spending: both use the Mastercard exchange rate with no foreign transaction fee. The ATM rules do differ, and not in the way a feature table implies: Chase allows up to £500/day and £1,500/month, a hard limit rather than a fee threshold, against Monzo's £200/month free outside the EEA then 3% with no ceiling. For how both sit against Starling, see the best UK bank account for travelling abroad.

You might also like

• Monzo vs Chase: 2% cashback vs better budgeting
• Is Monzo worth it? A review after 9 years as a customer
• Best second UK bank account to pair with Monzo

Sources

• MSE best digital bank accounts: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/digital-banking/ (opens in new tab)
• Chase UK cashback terms: https://www.chase.co.uk/gb/en/banking/cashback/ (opens in new tab)
• Monzo plans page: https://monzo.com/i/plans/ (opens in new tab)
• FCA Financial Services Register: https://register.fca.org.uk/s/ (opens in new tab)