Ok this would have worked!
I hate that phrase. Nothing personal, I DO NOT hate Dan before anyone flags this or suggests it’s a personal attack.
It’s right up there with “We can’t tell you why” and “Health and safety reasons”
To balance this, I am ok with “It’s our policy” or “we’re not setup to do that” after all why would an app based bank be setup for telephone payments but “for security reasons” is just a crap way of saying “we don’t want to tell you why” or we don’t know why so we’re saying it anyway
Edit I forgot a few
• for data protection reasons
• we apologise for any inconvenience that may have been caused
• we’re sorry you think that
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In this case, I suspect this is just a shorthand way of saying that Monzo isn’t set up to verify customer identities to a high degree of confidence over the phone, and so will not do sensitive account changes or anything like that.
If they wanted to become a full telephone bank, like First Direct, they would have to invest in setting up new processes for this kind of verification, and customers would probably have to set up security questions which they could be asked on the phone.
Otherwise, they can’t let you do it as they can’t be sure it’s genuinely you and not a fraudster. They also might not have actually produced the necessary staff-facing interfaces and tools to manually conduct transactions on customer’s accounts.
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That’s not the case at all. We have a much greater certainty when we’re interacting with customers via the app that we’re talking to the customer than we do over the phone.
That said we aren’t set up to add or remove payees from a customer’s account via chat either. It’s something only the customer can do via the app (after authenticating using their PIN).
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Yes, but only to the point of unpicking what happened (SIM swap fraud, or whatever) so that the customer can then manually set themselves up again with their emailed magic link and card PIN as usual?
The only want to get back into your account if you don’t have access to your email address is to email us from a new email and we’ll verify your identity that way.
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Pretty much what I figured @Dan5!
This makes complete sense to me from a security perspective, as you can then look into the request properly before actioning it.
It would be much more difficult to do this over the phone.
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100%! I don’t mean this to sound snarky, because it really isn’t, but we’re an app based bank. If you want to do your banking in a different way then there are better banks out there for you - first direct is clearly the leader when it comes to telephone banking and there are several options if you want to bank over the counter.
We can’t be everything and nor should we try to be.
We offer telephone and email support for when people have a problem accessing the app (and the in app help articles) but they are not our main methods of communication.
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This is pretty obvious to customers, I think.
The website and app promote self service or app-based support primarily, so people shouldn’t be “surprised” that this is how an app-only bank operates.
But that’s my point. You said “for security reasons” when actually It’s a conscious decision by Monzo , so why not say “we’re not set up to do that.” Or “that is not the service that we offer”
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I suppose because it’s a “security reason” (checking customer identities) that Monzo have chosen not to design a solution for (it could be “solved” technically speaking, but this isn’t a business priority, nor a priority for most of their customers).
It isn’t wrong to say it’s for security reasons, but perhaps it’s not as detailed an explanation as you would like.
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We can split hairs but this is not an attack on Monzo. In fact to some degree Starling are even worse for their choice use of everso vague language
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They’re different things:
- we aren’t set up to add or remove a payee via chat, it isn’t in our tooling
- we won’t make any changes to a customer account over the phone because it isn’t as secure as doing so via the app. You can get into a whole semantic debate as to whether that’s because we aren’t set up to do it or because the tooling isn’t in place but they’re the same sides of the coin.
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The phone support can help in emergencies, the app covers everything else.
You also can freeze your card online via the Monzo for emergencies webpage if something happens like you get mugged and lose both your card and phone at the same time.
That covers most people, I would say. The next thing on a priority list for most would probably be a more fully-featured desktop internet banking (like Monzo have for businesses). I think that might be useful, one day in the future, but I am not worried about not having it at the moment.
Frankly, if you find this too restrictive then I would wonder if it’s because you don’t like doing banking on your phone (and if that is the case then Monzo shouldn’t be your primary bank). The pitch, as it were, for Monzo is as an app-only bank that “lives on your phone”.
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I don’t want to make this a one on one argument Dan as I do understand you have no control over this but the coin analogy is wrong.
Monzo look at doing something, assess the risk and decide the risk is too high… That’s a choice
The same decision can be taken and processes put in place to negate the risks or at least minimise them… that is also a choice.
But my original point remains that it’s not for “security reasons” (a meaningless phrase akin to “go away we’re not telling you why so don’t keep asking”) it’s a choice not to provide a service and Monzo should own that.
I agree. And that is why I’d never advise anyone to be only Monzo. For those who insist on only using one bank by way of a mobile phone app (any bank), I’d also advise having a spare phone available.
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This is why I thought there’d be a way to do it over the phone with Nationwide, even though I didn’t have a card reader.
I imagine losing a card reader is pretty common, so it’s scary that you lose so much function without it.
There should always be alternative ways to complete tasks with your money.
I take your point here, but Dan has basically said as much anyway.
A Monzo employee, publicly saying, that it would be possible to verify people over the phone if a process was developed to do so, but a business decision has been taken not to develop said process - and so it isn’t. That’s pretty transparent and more information than you would get out of your typical big bank.
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True, and this is why I dislike banks that use card readers as even if you don’t have it with you for a short time you are effectively locked out of fully managing your account.
It’s worth having more than one card reader, to cover this scenario.
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HSBC and Barclays allow you to use the app as a verification device instead of the card reader, I assume others will follow.
Fortunately other than the branding the devices (except for HSBC) are all the same. If you have more than one account say Barclays and RBS then you’ll have 2 readers
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