Barclays chat

It’s worth remembering that many of those banks could send you text messages when you made a transaction and had been able to do so for years before Monzo was created so in-app notifications duplicated something they already had.

If it was so easy for Monzo to make changes, you would think they would have much better support for joint accounts (for instance).

2 Likes

My take is that Monzo have a system where it is so easy to make changes that they sometimes go for that, and do it now, rather than overcomplicate and introduce delay. This is probably why joint accounts aren’t always supported by new features straight away, as to add support could delay the feature or [they are flexible enough to be able to launch without it so] they can launch without it.

Sort of Mininum Viable Product in action, and it makes sense as most users don’t have a joint account so for them it means the feature is available quicker, and even joint users can get the feature quicker if they are willing to use their personal account for it.

Yeah some of the systems are are bit old school, TSB’s migration was something else but they’re slowly getting there, I have accounts with TSB and to be honest, I must’ve been one of the lucky ones cause everything works fine for me :joy: but they’re on a “newer” operation system rather than renting from LBG. I use tsb for my savings and mortgage and Barclays for the rewards.

Most banks need to update their systems into this century, if Monzo can do this with their customer numbers vs for example Barclays with their customer numbers, they should easily do it but they might be scared incase a fiasco like what happened at TSB happens to them :joy::joy:

1 Like

The system is newer but not really less-complicated. In fact, much of it was coded in Spain by Sabis (Sabadell’s in-house IT group) which is now a bit of a headache for TSB.

It was designed to be a bit more modular, so it is easier to add new features, but under the hood it is quite complicated and it does seem to be relatively unreliable even now - 2 and a half years on.

TSB is the cautionary tale for traditional banks in terms of IT migration.

2 Likes

I think the key difference is that, as you say, Monzo are willing to launch a MVP rather than go through the more QA approach of other banks.

However, this often seems to be the point that Monzo stop development and move on to something else, rather than improve that product over time - hence joint accounts missing so many features that launched for sole accounts years ago.

4 Likes

13 posts were split to a new topic: Collected thoughts on card design

Yet Halifax text me 12 hours after all my direct debits have done out, and my standing order has gone in, to advise I “might be overdrawn”, Barclays text me my latest balance which is often inaccurate, Barclaycard text me my current balance but often miss recent payments, and Lloyds told me it takes 5 working days to change the phone number notifications are sent to.

Edit - and when I had a Natwest account, you could only get your balance sent by SMS once a week and it came with the caveat that it was up to 3 days old.

So, yeah, they might’ve had a system in place, but it still wasn’t real time.

MVP and QA aren’t opposite ends of the spectrum though. You can quite easily have an MVP which meets basic criteria, which has been through rigorous QA to ensure that it meets the brief and customer needs. It’s odd that you’re suggesting Monzo somehow sacrifice QA?

5 Likes

Which features are there for Individual accounts, that are not for joint? Plus, premium, what else?

Overdraft. Pretty much the most everyday feature of a current account.

1 Like

Quite a few features not implemented on Joint accounts - recently listed here:

3 Likes

From memory, I believe the regulator has set times that SMS’s can’t be sent (i.e. the middle of the night) to prevent customers being disturbed.

True, QA and MVP don’t have two be mutually exclusive. However, I have seen too many cases here where Monzo launch an MVP then need to fix something so that a feature operates as originally intended.

But it can be even more basic. During QA, one would expect Monzo to pick up if any of their web page links were broken and fix them before launching something.

However, its been over a week since Premium was launched but the Premium page on the Monzo website still has a link which goes to a 404 error…

2 Likes

You kind of missed the point. I’m not overdrawn… Because of the delay, all the scheduled payments have finished. I get a text usually around 12 noon (10 hours after they’ve processed) telling me I have 3 hours to pay in money to come out of my overdraft.

Their systems aren’t real-time.

3 Likes

Well you could imagine that the SMS got generated (but not sent, so placed in a queue) when you went overdrawn, it then sat patiently in the sending queue for when it was sent on.

So if the regulator has set the SMS times, in a sense it is real time as it generated the message as you went overdrawn, but the delivery of that notification isn’t.

I do agree it’s unhelpful having it after the balance has gone back into the black already. Its a bit of trade off of generating the message immiedately vs doing it later and potenitally not notifiying the customer of being overdrawn until much later in the day as you chew through the backlog of messages and staying within whatever limits your SMS provider has set.

Not saying this is exactly how it works as I don’t have any experiance building banking systems, but its how I could imagine it works.

4 Likes

An interesting article showing the impact of SMS messages of customer behaviour

1 Like

It’s very likely how legacy systems work, sure. That’s the comparison I’m drawing. Monzo can tell me the night before a direct debit, whether there’s enough in my account or pots to cover it. My legacy account incorrectly tells me the status of my account 10 hours later.

I’m sure they do change consumer behaviour. But I’d also be willing to bet on the fact that they nullify consumer behaviour when they are continuously sent incorrectly. I get one on the 1st of every month - at first I complained to Halifax on every occurance. Now, 9 months on, just ignore it. What happens they day I am actually overdrawn? I imagine my response to the text won’t be the correct one.

Then imagine the same scenario involving someone with anxiety. If you were expecting there to be £1,000+ in the account, but get a text saying you’re overdrawn, that’s unnecessarily stress inducing. There’s no defending their implementation of this.

5 Likes

Well they can assuming you only have money in monzo or only coming in via BACs, if you have money coming in via standard order from elsewhere, Monzo will be in the same place saying you’ll be over drawn when you know you won’t be.

That’s a fair point. I’ll give them an ounce of leaway here.

1 Like

2 Likes

7.2 of the My Money Manager T&Cs;

This is a fee free service, although we may charge a fee for this in the future. If we introduce a fee we will give you no less that 60 days’ notice by email or secure message in your Online Banking.

Gives them the option to monetise it later. The norm really.

Have subscribed to it, however, as it only house my household DDs, I cannot see what the Insight can offer for me personally :man_shrugging::smile:

Same boat for me. It’s very basic, and only available for full months - so there’s no data for October yet. It’s a work in progress, I suppose.

1 Like