Emma Feedback Thread / Q&A

How do you feel about the challenger banks offering that service directly (Monzo’s or Starling’s Marketplace)? Would that be a problem, or do you have a way around that? Or is your product mainly aimed at legacy accounts which don’t have a marketplace, and the “threat” from the challenger’a marketplaces are minor?

I think we are in a stronger position since we don’t have a product offering. The marketplace for them is cheap money, they are still going back to the old game of lending (overdraft <> interest).

The other cool thing about the current legislation is that will be able to initiate payments on Emma at some point this or next year.

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I’m just trying this now, very good so far :+1:

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Lots of little UI touches that I really like.

Odd that I can’t turn location off in app, in that case why show it and make me mad I have no control?

Liking the facebook updates.

Investments doesn’t behave in a useful way to me - it’s still my money, it’s just in an ISA not linked to Emma. I wouldn’t want my total to go down, as I haven’t really spent anything. Perfect behaviour for me would be to be marked as investments, or savings, so I could see how much I moved in one category, but for it to be excluded from affecting the total.

I’m not sure what the point of ‘family’ is? I would much prefer a gift category. That’s what I’m using family for now, whether it is for someone related to me or not. Worth mentioning as your internal analytics will show it being used, but I’m just using as if it is a gifts category, as family isn’t beneficial to me. I share Spotify, but that is bills, or we eat out, but that is eating out, or I buy or receive presents, but that is gifts, or we share a taxi, but that is transport.

I really like that it picks up Monzos categories and applies them in Emma, so I don’t have to do it again.

Interesting I can use fingerprint unlock (Android) on Emma but as I’m <6 I cant on Monzo.

Edit:

This is very exiting. I have no interest in the apps from any of my other banks outside Monzo, which does mean I use Monzo’s topup feature if I’m not near my laptop. To be able to trigger it from Emma (or Monzo) would be much better.

I agree, and I use the excluded category for this now with a tag to mark it as investment.

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Same here. I do find Emma’s totalling to be better than Yolt so I hope it can soon cover more account types

one problem with the investment category is that some investments will be volatile and so emma’s total will be wrong.

Yep, I think it makes more sense to exclude them entirely from spending and preferably be able to directly display them in Emma directly :wink:

I’m really impressed by the speed of development from the Emma team, each new release has significant improvements and they appear to be taking on board user feedback.

For me they have overtaken Yolt, Emma seems so much more responsive.

What do you think?

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I really like it. Looks like they will be implementing the feature to change when your ‘month’ period runs, so you can do it from payday to payday, which would be amazing. Was chatting to them and it seems they hope to get it out by the end of April, so fingers crossed!

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I liked the app much more than Yolt etc but ended up closing my account as I don’t like giving out my actual login details for my bank accounts. Waiting for open banking to fix this. Then I may revisit…

I mostly use my amex card for spending. What I also noticed is that if you have additional card holders on the same account it couldn’t distinguish between them. I only want to see my spending not my families.

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I thought I was the only one.

Got to the screen where they wanted my login, password and memorable word and I just couldn’t do it

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Emma is quite nice with the user accounts and how it deals with pots/goals in comparison to Yolt. Yolt doesn’t seem to differentiate them through the API - so I am seeing transactions that are incorrectly tagged there.

I’ve only tested Yolt and Emma with Monzo and Starling as they both go through APIs to access them without having to hand over a password to be used. Once more banks are done via the APIs, I’ll probably look at adding other accounts to test it properly.

I concur with @DaveTMG

Emma has become one of most used app on my phone. It has simple and well laid out interface IMO. Support is responsive and sorts things out. Yolt is slow to refresh and accounts do not sync in the background and also no notifications for pay, refunds and weekly spends etc… Emma does all these things and plus new tags are really good to know how much money is going where :smile:

I don’t mind connecting accounts which don’t yet have an API because I think FCA approval is good enough for me and App is not able to initiate any payments.

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Yep, I’m with @SC95 on the handing over of details - I previously didn’t because the banks would deny responsibility if something went wrong, but with the recent changes and FCA approval, I’m happier to let them have the login details.

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I love all the tags. I’ve been making good use of them this week. I’m really getting on well with Emma lately.

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I signed up a month or so ago. Nice chap enabled it.

It looks colourful and on the face of it, with all those boxes with numbers in, ought to be telling me lots I need to know. But it isn’t.

Closed my account today, though I’m sure its the solution to something.

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If you only have one account in it there is little point, but with accounts at multiple providers it brings them all together which can be useful for many people

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Sure - I linked a couple of accounts but I guess I don’t need that degree of oversight, with one account (Santander) being a repository for funds I don’t touch anyway.

I admire it though.

Yes, I find it is effectively ‘monzo’ for multiple accounts and is moving so much faster than monzo are.

My major wish is that it would support the non-amex cards I use so I can track everything.

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