After 6 weeks of use

Monzo Chat
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Hi Mondo!

Loving using the app and the convenience of knowing my up to date ‘value’! Thought I should put some things down having used the Mondo card almost exclusively for day-to-day use for 6 weeks or so.

Notifications
This is something I find frustrating in iOS apps generally. I wondered whether this was just a restriction in the software. I get an instant notification of a spend on my iPhone, but then if I don’t get round to opening the app until I’m on the tube, the spend is not listed. It requires a connection to update the front page of the app. Is this not something that can happen in the background? If there’s a notification, why doesn’t the app update too?

Contactless delays
These seem to have gone away… I was finding it annoying in the early weeks of use having quite a lot of ‘Delayed Transactions’. These a very minimal now, and mainly TFL.

Cash
I think this has been mentioned elsewhere. I’d like to be able to allocate where these spends are going.

Icons changing
This is an odd one - quite often the icon will be correct at time of spend, and then the next day it’s changed to something else or the default option.

Archive
Whether I ever look at historical information or not, I’d like to know it’s there. What happens at the end of the Alpha. Where does my data go? Will it be accessible online? What if I move my banking to Mondo later this year - will the Alpha data be moved across?

Ethical Stance
Whilst we’re talking about the future of Mondo and the ultimate aim to open a new bank, what is your ethical stance? IE: If I put my money into Mondo, how will it be invested?

Keep up the good work. Thanks.

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Awesome, thank you very much for that summary and spot-on questions. It’s really really useful.

A few answers for some of your questions…

Can we use the notifications to refresh the app in the background?

If I remember correctly we actually had that working internally at some point (very early days) but there were some security implications on how apps stay on the background, keychains and such. Not sure about this, probably @james can give you the right answer if you want to dive deeper.

Lots of delayed transactions on the early weeks

Totally. We have it right at the top of our list of known issues since the beginning Known issues / bugs 🐛🐜🐞

Once you use the card enough the problem disappears but for new users it’s a really frustrating first impression. It’ll be fixed soon :slightly_smiling:

I want to allocate where my cash is going

That’s a really tricky problem that we definitely need to explore. On the one hand we want you to not need to categorise your transactions manually (even if that means that it’s not 100% accurate) but on the other hand cash is a reality we need to live with.

I think this is a similar problem to go to Sainsbury’s and buy £10 of food and a £10 DVD. Should that be groceries?, entertainment?… segmentation makes total sense but the price to pay is a far more complex product (movable pieces, more things that can break, etc.) and ask a manual effort from our users. So, yes, a tricky one :dizzy_face:

The icons are changing

Yes, the way we grab icons is still manual and on top of that we have a bug that sometimes replaces a correct logo with a generic human silhouette. Pretty soon we’ll improve the way we collect and store icons and that should improve.

At the same time is one of those problems of long tail, as early adopters you alphas are discovering new places every single day, as long as we grow the odds of getting to a place where all the information is correct because a mondonaut :rocket: was there before will increase.

I want to keep my historical information after the alpha

We’ll do our very best to migrate the transactions for you and give you a really smooth transition from alpha to next stages. In any case, we’ll save the data so even in the worst case scenario we’ll let you download all your stuff.

If I put my money into Mondo, how will it be invested?

Very good question. During the first year a very small proportion of your money will be lent to private individuals in the form of unsecured overdrafts. That’s all the lending we’re doing. The rest sits in cash at the Bank of England. In future, we will do more personal lending and invest some of the money in UK government bonds. What are the important things to you in that regard?

Again, thank you very much for your awesome post. Happy to answer any other question or comment you may have :slight_smile:

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Ethical implications are extremely important to me, and is the reason I recently switched to Triodos for my savings.

I feel, seen as you guys are a tech company, perhaps lending to social impact startups, other innovative businesses, could be a great way to be ethical and support your fellow small businesses.

In fact the reason I learned about Triodos in the first place is because of their support of Ecotricity! This kind of support is great for marketing & exposure as well :slight_smile:

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Love this suggestion :slight_smile:

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Mondos stance on ethical banking (I.e does it have any desire to be one) is something I meant to ask about at the alpha event.

For me a bank with the technical maturity of mondo and the ethical backbone of triodos would be “the ultimate bank”.

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Another two months in, and some follow up points…

My data
I might have to swap out my iPhone. The screen is squeaky (anyone else have that?!). If I do - what happens to my data? Is it locally stored, or does it come from a server? Also - how far off is ‘Export’?

Ethical Banking
I think it’s important that Mondo lays out it’s ethical stance - now rather than later. I’d really like to know that Mondo won’t be investing in nasties. I’ll give you examples if you wish, but it’s probably fairly obvious.

Cash allocating
I still want this. Cash isn’t a ‘category’.

Sneak peaks
I love these. Can we have more - even if they don’t make the final product?

Banking licence
How’s it going? Are you just in limbo at the moment, or have there been updates?

Sending money
I have no one to send to. Will you be asking us to involve friends and family as part of the Alpha?

My details
A screen that shows my details would be great. I’d like to be able to update my address, telephone number, password etc. I can’t even remember if I put in the right details during sign up!

Converted
I don’t think I can go back to ‘the old way’ of banking. I tried to transfer £1k to Mondo last week (the third time I’ve done it through Apple Pay in the Mondo App). Declined. 4 times. No text, no phone call from my ‘legacy’ bank. A 25 minute phone call later and my card was unlocked, and I was able to top up. Truly depressing.

Cheers all.

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This is awesome! Please keep this up :smiley: Some quick answers:

My data: It’s all on the server so as soon as you login on your new iPhone, everything will be there. Export is coming soon – @ole might be able to give a more exact time…

Ethical banking: Agreed and it’s something we’re going to be working on clarifying – it just hasn’t been as urgent as things like crowdfunding, app development etc. yet because we’re not a bank but we will do!

Cash allocating: Lots of improvements still to do with categories – this is very much a first draft

Sneak peaks: That’s all @hugo :wink: I’ll pester him for more :stuck_out_tongue:

Banking license: Yep, coming along nicely. It’s now a continual process of working with the regulators over the next 5/6 months to get to the stage they’re happy – we can’t share detailed updates unfortunately but suffice to say, no news is good news!

My details: Yup, design is WIP right now

Thanks so much for this, please keep it up – it’s incredibly useful.

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Awesome feedback, thank you. I agree with everything you say - we’ve got some announcements in the next week or two that I think you’ll like :slight_smile:

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Our first thoughts on ‘ethical banking’ are now up on our blog: What Makes A Bank Ethical? Mondo’s Beta Ethical Thoughts Would love to hear your thoughts :slight_smile:

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