I don’t really pre order anything to collect in store so I wouldn’t have to experience that, and as for train tickets I usually buy on the day as I’m rarely going anywhere the price would be different pre booking.
Yes, my life is dull
In the event you ever do want to prebook a train, have a look into Smartcards. Adoption is limited at the moment but the other day I was able to buy a London travelcard (train from my local village into London and back + unlimited TfL travel in zones 1-6) through my Greater Anglia app and then used my iPhone’s NFC to load the ticket on to the plastic Smartcard. It was pretty amazing! No visit to a ticket collection machine required, and no fiddling about with paper tickets at the Underground gateline, just tap and enter as if using an Oyster. 10/10!
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I live in the North West, Chester, so it’s generally the Trainline app for simplification and mobile tickets, but if I ever visit London I’ll bare that in mind.
They don’t just work in London, that just happened to be my last journey! I’ve used my Smartcard before for season tickets in East Anglia. Northern and Transport for Wales both have Smartcards, although whether they’re only currently working for season tickets I’m not sure. Avanti has them too, and they can be used for both season and day tickets 
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If you contact the company you booked the ticket with, they can change it to allow any card collection.
Yes, that’s what GWR said in their email. But that’s far from convenient, especially when I buy tickets at odd hours of the night or when quickly ordering on my phone on my way to the station in a rush!
Yeah not so good if you buy the ticket soon before a journey. A lot of the train operating companies do 24/7 Twitter, and they can sort it out though.
Yes, true (although when I’ve dealt with a few of the TOC’s Twitter CS before it’s been less than straightforward!). It’s honestly just less hasstle I think to use a different bank for this situation, or Apple Pay if available. For ticket collection, a PIN that’s shown in the train company’s app and specific to your account or something similar instead of the payment card would be so much easier as a form of verification tbh.
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Yeah it’s a finite issue. It will get better when legacy big banks start using numberless so it’s not a biggie not being able to put every single purchase through a numberless card.
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I believe the Chase card setup in terms of separate physical and digital numbers, and the physical details being hidden, is basically the same as Apple Card in the US? If that were to ever make its way across the pond I’m sure we’d see a very sudden drop in these issues!
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I did do a transaction on the plane, it just hasn’t showed up yet.
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Not sure tbh. It could be tokinised to the same number for both given it’s a credit card rather than a debit.
From Apple’s support site:
To make purchases online with Apple Card where Apple Pay isn’t accepted yet, use your Apple Card number. You can find your Apple Card number on a compatible iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch with the latest version of iOS, iPadOS, or watchOS. You can also see the last four digits of your Physical Card number…
I think the ‘also’ here suggests they’re different numbers. In fact, it’s just like Chase in that they only show you the last four digits of the physical card number. You can also regenerate the digital card details in the Wallet app as you please - no mention of a limit on this unlike Chase though.
On the topic of places where a numberless card could prove troublesome: I was at a clinic the other day for an appointment and at reception they wanted to ‘put my card on file’ (in case I do a runner and don’t pay any bills I suppose), so I handed over my card expecting her to insert it into a card reader and ask me to enter my PIN since that’s how I’ve had it done at other places before, but to my surprise she just read off all the numbers and entered it into her computer. I would’ve loved to have seen her face if I’d handed her a Chase debit card instead!
(The card I use when companies want to hold one on file for collateral is always linked to a current account with basically no money in it, otherwise I’d have felt a lot more uneasy about handing over those details for a receptionist to type into something)
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To be honest I doubt they would! But if I were to try, I have a bunch of virtual cards on my (free) Revolut account, no need to pay for Monzo Plus! It’s great that they allow free customers to generate loads of virtual cards, to the point where they can be used as disposable ones (there’s a limit on the number you can generate per month, but it’s never got in the way for me).
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Right now the Chase are offering a very basic package. There are some interesting features like the numberless card, and ability to open multiple actual accounts, but neither of those on their own really differentiates them from existing challenger banks. They have announced the high interest round-up already so that must be coming soon, and looks good but Chase will need a lot more than that to attract customer.
There are a number of very basic things missing though such as direct debit and CASS as you mention. We assume they will be coming soon, but until they do really limits the functionality.
There are also some legacy features such as cheque and cash deposit missing, which won’t matter to most people, but will matter very much to those people who still need this service from their bank. To be honest if that is important to you then you are best of with a legacy bank for now.
People like myself will use this as a spending card while the cashback is active, it beats my Amex cashback, and is free money, not a lot of it but enough to make it worth using.
In order to retain me and I assume many others as clients beyond that is to over the course of the next year introduce features to make it comparable to challenger banks like Monzo.
The advantage they could have other challenger banks is to introduce legacy bank products like credit cards, loans, insurance, and mortgages.
My very brief assessment of the current main challenger banks
- Monzo - probably best in terms of retail banking features. I didn’t like the style which is focused on a younger demographic, but that is personal taste and may have changed over the last year or 2. Also to get access to some of those features you need Monzo Plus which comes with a monthly fee.
- Starling - Offer a great service but have fallen behind on features. No bill payments from Spaces (their version of Pots), and no virtual cards. I think the problem is Starling is focused almost completely on their business offerings, so don’t expect any personal account development in the short to medium term.
- Revolut - comparable to Monzo on features and you get them all on the free tier, also crypto and trading, but if you want to use the investment features you will probably be looking at a higher tier fee paying such as premium or metal. Also no banking license in the UK yet, and some trust issues whether that is deserved or not.
So Chase with the right development and we know they have the capital to invest I think they could become the top option for many people.
Or they could mess it up and exit the market in a few months, we will just have to wait and see.
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Anyone received there card yet?
Stick Monzo with Chase UI and it would be complete for me.
The Monzo app is a bit messy, I can never find what I want straight away like direct debits I keep looking at the pots when actually I need to go to payments and then scheduled.
Also doesn’t open on the accounts page from the offset and then the transactions feed isn’t as slick as I like, it’s not a fixed screen due to card at the top and then gotta swipe to lose it. Too many taps and swipes.
Move everything Monzo offers, to the design of Chase, I’d probably not move banks for a long while.
Other than basic features ie direct debits, I’d be interested to know if some form of packaged account does come for travel/phone insurance, cashback for direct debits maybe,
Take NatWest, everything was great for them until they changed the font of the accounts page and it put me off, but dark mode, transfers, £10 account fee for insursnce etc with £5 cashback every month.
Revolut is a sales platform with a bank account linked in IMO. I guess it works for them, though too messy of an app for me.
Santander, basic but functional. Cashback is good, and £130 switcher bonus.
Not a fan of Lloyds or any other app. Starling was nice from a transactions feed layout but again, the font is an offput.
White and blue is my thing. My Chase card just arrived! ….
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Odd one does it feel like a normal card?
I found revolut cards to feel cheap