3DS implementation, negative comment

You can say it as much as you like but compliance with the law/regulatory oversight isn’t something that applies to the establishment only, unfortunately. :pensive:

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Basically last month, I paid my Tesco Credit Card bill by opening the tesco app, selecting make a payment, choose my saved monzo card and entered the security code. All relatively painless.
This month I am backwards and forward between apps, getting suggestions of receive an SMS, send a bank transfer etc etc.

Whether it is the new regulations or poor implementation (Clearly a combination of both) How has my life got easier?

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Strangely, I’ve never paid off my CC’s via bank transfer - No real reason why, but I’ve always thought it could cause more issues if things weren’t picked up.

When you do this via AMEX, does it “Zero” your balance straight away like it does when paying via card?

Yes. Of course it takes a while to show up in the CC app potentially.

I really like Monzo, but I don’t like it when all sorts of rationale as to why the customer experience has worsened.
I much prefer the straightforward answer of " We have to do this, it clearly isn’t giving a great client experience at the moment but we will work on it and appreciate all your feedback"

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Sorry, that was more my question (about it showing up in the app).

AMEX currently does this straight away - Tesco can take a few days anyway, so that’s less of an issue.

Instant yes, as soon as they receive the FPS (although this can technically be up to 2 hrs as we know).

Personal Cardmembers
Please use the following bank details:
Account name: American Express Services Europe Limited
Sort code: 30-00-00
Account number: 00200476
Use your 15 digit American Express Card number as the reference.
Your Faster Payment or BACS payment will update your balance as soon as it has been received.

I see this has being faster for the end user as everything is saved including the reference. All you need to do is enter the amount.

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Don’t forget though, whilst your experience has worsened (mine as well), there will be others whose experience has got better, just because they now have this option full stop.

For anyone who was previously declined due to lack of 3DS, they will be over the moon.

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Tesco Bank are strange, their FPS are always slow on their current account. I’ve waited up to an hour to move money to my Lloyds Bank account before.

This is what they say regarding paying CC off by bank transfer:

Faster payment
You can transfer money from your bank account. Transfer the money to sort code 40-64-15 , account number 31310006 and enter your 16-digit credit card number as the reference.
Payments made using the Faster Payment Service are normally made within two hours. However, they may take longer between 4pm Saturday and 6am Sunday and if we take our service offline for maintenance.

Yeah, if it weren’t for those damn X3 points for the kids days out, I wouldn’t use it - As it is, it’s used rarely anyway.

The downside to FPS over in app card payment is you have to remember the exact amount - Sounds easier than you think :joy:

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I see a lot of very rare edge cases being discussed and ultimately it’s very difficult to avoid all. A trade off has to be made somewhere and I feel Monzo have found the perfect balance here between security, usability.

Thanks for the explanation. It does seem odd that a secure item like the Apple Watch can’t be used for authorisation.

Still - the wording on the Monzo app to return back surely should be easy to add?

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We don’t have an Apple Watch app so it would be a lot of work for a small number of users. It’s also extremely difficult (if not impossible?) to do it within a notification on the Watch without a Watch app in a way that satisfies the Strong Customer Authentication requirements. To do it within a notification on an iPhone would require a notification extension and by my testing last night, would still have a high chance of getting you kicked out of the credit card provider’s app. :disappointed:

Don’t take this as a “we will never do this” though! Just that given the constraints, it’s a tough one that we can’t yet tackle.

Agreed, it requires app-side work so is dependent on those teams, their schedules, and the app release cycle. If it were something I could control from the backend, it would be done already. :smile:

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If Monzo implemented actions on notifications, so you could say yes without opening the app, then this resolve the issue.

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Thanks. I still think an Apple Watch app would be a very useful tool, and it’s not a very small number of customers I am sure who own an Apple Watch (or another smartwatch brand). This would then allow you to implement this. It would be a massive progress to say you can authorise a payment with one tap on your Watch.

Hi @rika - Even if it did end up kicking you out of the CC app, wouldn’t this solution still be better on every other occasion?

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Could you have user chosen opt-out for some companies? From the merchant screen, the user could choose to disable 3DS for this company, authenticate the choice using PIN/fingerprint, then further payments skip 3DS flow if permitted by merchant.

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Appreciate all the input from everyone, the clear message is that people like Monzo and want to get involved when something isn’t working as a user expected.
I too like Monzo, otherwise I wouldn’t have raised the issue.
In summary from my perspective I see the following.

There is a regulatory driven requirement to have two factor authentication on transactions. This makes perfect sense and will hopefully cut down fraud and thus be better for all, providers and customers alike.

The implementation of this two factor authentication is not yet industry standardised, different providers run at different speeds and have varying implementations. To be expected.

From my perspective as a customer the experience has not been great with the key issue being lack of information. There is clearly an issue with performing, for want of a better phrase, an app to app transaction.

What would I like as a customer? To know what happened.
My experience was: I believed I had approved the payments, but nothing was evident to me, it just took me back to my default monzo view.
What would I like as a customer
When I approve it there must be an ack, nack or nothing back from the other party. I would ask that Monzo code a “If a nack or nothing back from third party return message to customer “” Transaction has NOT been executed”""
At least I have then complete certainty over whether the payment has happened or not. Lack of knowing what happened (Fail or success) is a really client experience downer.
A real customer winner would be for the message to have a “go here for more detail” link in it. This link take me to a page that explains two factor auth, why it’s good, why the implemenattion it is running at different speeds from different providers and possible workarounds, i.e. suggest the SMS route or avoid making the payment app to app. That makes me feel my provider knows there is issues and has taken time to explain them to me.

Unfortunately in this instance I have ended up transferring money back to Barclays and making the payment using my Barclays debit card. All went smoothly. (I appreciate they haven’t rolled out their solution yet and may have problems when they do)
As I customer I will always look for the path of least resistance and currently for these type of payments for me Monzo doesn’t provide that, whereas last month they did.

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Could we get an email as an alternative to SMS?

I get absolutely no signal at my parents house (Seems to work for Vodafone customers only, every other network is dud) :frowning:

I also found it initially confusing when asked for 3DS when using my JA card, the notification took me to my personal account, i didn’t see any options to approve anything and I got confused, so asked for SMS instead.

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You’re absolutely right and this is something we’ve got in the pipeline to fix, it requires a bit of app work so is limited by those schedules. :slightly_smiling_face:

In-app help articles are being written by the support team right now. They’ve been asking me a lot of questions this week and will hopefully write more useful help pages to regular people than I possibly could!

This is one of the things we’re considering. :ok_hand:

Known bug that’s on our wall to fix. :+1: Not sure if the issue lies with the app or our backend yet.

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