I totally missed the reference field while paying a large tax bill recently, while I was actively looking for it. My partner just did the same thing when paying another important / reference required bill.
Looking back at how either of us saw this, I tried a new payment, and finally realised how we missed it. See attached. It looks like ‘Sent from Monzo’ is a title field, exactly the same as the ‘Schedule Payment’ title. The word ‘Reference’ is then super tiny grey, like the footnote to Schedule Payment (the kind of text style that’s designed to be ignored, if were honest!). Please make the Reference title clearer and leave the field blank or something. Ta!
Voted for this reason and the design inconsistency.
From my point of view, I think what might help is indenting the reference line (“Sent from Monzo”, that is), to make it clearer it’s a field under the Reference heading, and also make it harder for the eye to visually skim over it when going straight down the page.
Personally I’d like it left blank and be forced to either pick a prior reference or type a new one in every single payment (never make an assumption on what reference I want).
although my display is slightly different, it shows ‘Reference or message’ and it’s more obvious that it is something to change as it is on a ‘line’, just like the £ value entry is ( with ‘Use the new “Payees hub”’ and ‘Favourite payees’ enabled in Labs)
with ‘Use the new “Payees hub”’ and ‘Favourite payees’ enabled in Labs)