Competition: Suggestions for better wording wanted!

Monzo Chat
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Happy Friday :smiley: Iā€™m struggling to find a good word to use in an upcoming feature so thought Iā€™d reach out to the hive mind and see if thereā€™s anything better. One challenge, with a related sub-challenge:

  1. An alternative to the word Merchant. We use this in lots of places to refer to places where you spend money ā€” both online and offline. I donā€™t like the word merchant but am yet to come up with a better alternative :slight_smile:

  2. Ideally, the same word should also be able to be more encompassing and also include People, eg. friends or family that you send money to. So an alternative to Merchants and People. If itā€™s not the same word for 1) as it is for 2), thatā€™s fine too :slight_smile:

The reward for the winner will be seeing your suggestion used all over the Monzo apps :stuck_out_tongue: Good luck!

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How about recipient?

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Retailer implies a shop but Merchant implies not just people selling goods but services as well so to me it is the better option

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how about payee ā€¦

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Merchants are people too! :smiley:

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Having just done a Thesaurus lookup I like the word ā€œTycoonā€ or ā€œTraffickerā€ but they maybe more on the jokey side of suggestions :slight_smile:

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Payee implies you are sending them money like a transfer or cheque recipient could be anyone personal or corporate and either being sent money or doing a point of sale spend. Recipient seems best option so far on this thread

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How about for 1 replacing merchant with ā€˜wonderful establishmentā€™

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Google definition of the word ā€œmerchantā€:

a person or company involved in wholesale trade, especially one dealing with foreign countries or supplying goods to a particular trade.

I would say ā€œvendorā€ is closer

a person or company offering something for sale, especially a trader in the street.

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I just Googled the definition of payee

a person to whom money is paid or is to be paid, especially the person to whom a cheque is made payable.

it just sounds a bit too formal / financey for me. Recipientā€™s more formal than Iā€™d like too really, a more casual term would be good, I just canā€™t think of one!

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We definitely shouldnā€™t use ā€œCounterpartyā€ then :grin: Then we really will be using financial lingo, although is actually the thing we are trying to define

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counterparty :wink: ā€¦

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I suspect ā€œstoreā€ is not good because your energy company wouldnā€™t be considered a store?

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Personally I like counterparty, but I donā€™t know if that is just because I am so used to using this for financial transactions. It does sound very legal. :sweat_smile:

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Accurate, but a little too formal for my liking. My suggestion is also too formal come to think of it. Weā€™d inevitably lose some accuracy of the word if making it more casual.

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How about transferee?

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Have you considered receiver?

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What about recipients?

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How about ā€˜individual(s)ā€™ and ā€˜groupā€™ or ā€˜organisationā€™ or possibly ā€˜establishmentā€™?

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All companies and people that we both pay money to and receive money from are in the broadest sense a contact. So, contact isnā€™t too formal and covers pretty much every scenario doesnā€™t it?