Am I alone in thinking that the merchant logos are unhelpful?
They’re evidently a nightmare to manage for Monzo, some small merchants simply don’t have a logo or branding, and even the ones that are ‘correct’ come in so many different shapes and sizes, that they look pretty terrible.
I have 3 ‘logos’ from shops that I use regularly that are in fact tiny photos of the shop fronts - it’s daft.
Worse still, the logos replace the category information, so you have less information on the screen than if you simply displayed a category icon.
I like them. I think the way it’s done could use a lot of improvement.
I imagine long term it will be a more automated crowd sourced process. And hopefully there will be more options for sourcing images in the case of irrelevant Twitter logos or lack of any suitable source. I do think non-logo images should not be used - they look silly.
It doesn’t seem to automatically link though? When I submit merchant updates, I am adding the twitter handle in order for them to get the correct logo, which is shown on the twitter profile - different from the logo they are already using.
I like having the logos too. I’m sure they are working on ways to automate the process better. I think it was mentioned on another thread that the merchant feedback process is being improved too
I sometimes see in my feed about four logos for the four different merchant entries for that one shop. I can’t remember the brand which Monzo decided to use their Christmas logo for the merchant logo but it looked a little silly, especially when it was well after Christmas.
I like having the logos. Although in themselves they don’t really add functionally, there is something very pleasing about having them. Perhaps it’s because they contribute to the overall sense of merchant enrichment information, which as mentioned earlier is likely a core attraction of Monzo for many (it is for me). However, I do hope Monzo will improve the logo updating experience.
Something I would also like is the option of toggling between merchant logos and transaction category logos in transaction feeds. I’d generally use the merchant logos view and then occasionally toggle to transaction category logos as a way to do a quick at-a-glance check if recent transactions have been correctly auto-categorized. However, those who don’t like merchant logos could leave transaction category logos permanently enabled. If this idea were ever picked up, I’d suggest the toggle is easy to access directly from transaction lists (rather than requiring access via the settings section). Perhaps it could be via a gesture to avoid cluttering the screen with a toggle switch.
I’m in favour of the merchant logos. For me its a security measure too. If theres no logo, I immediately check the payment thoroughly. They can be improved though.
*I Quite like having the logos around, I’m a visual person and it gives it the friendly feel I enjoy rather than everything being text-only.
(The following is an example of the other day for me, but might not be the same for everyone, or every transaction) When I see that £14.99 has gone from my account, It’s nice to be able to open the app, see the Spotify logo and instantly make the connection, “oh yeah”, rather than find the £14.99 then look for what it was spent on, for me it’s a slight increase in efficiency.
Yes I agree some can be improved, but that comes with time and can be difficult with purchases happening around the world.
However this could easily be something that could be turned on or off with a setting depending on what the user would like to see, it’s the same with the “Pulse Graph”, some people like it, some don’t, it may be nice to have a settings page called “Personalize Monzo App” where you can turn logos on or off, pulse graph on or off, and other things people may or may not want.
I think it’s one of the major selling point when most people see the app it appeals visually with these merchant logos.
System Monzo uses for merchant data needs updating and maybe some sort of AI and automation plus some trusted people to review like coral crew here maybe…
Yeah, I see what you mean. I noticed today that a company I manually updated with COps has now switched back to no logo/location info when I made a new purchase today. The older transaction is correct, the new one not, so it seems that each transaction is it’s own individual entity, rather than being updated in a central database or something.
I love our merchant logos, but our merchant system needs work. I’ve been putting quite a lot of effort into improving our internal tools to give us greater visibility of the overall health of our data, and to make it easier to do large scale refactoring. By far my number one priority with this work is to reduce duplicate “merchant groups” - in other words, if we have 5 different “Starbucks” each with different logos and shop locations, these need to be merged.
I think this lays the groundwork for a more complete system where we can crowdsource more data, allow people to track their feedback, and give merchants the ability to log in and manage their own presence on Monzo.
Below is a screenshot of what we see on the new system so far (it’s WIP).
