This is a minor piece of feedback, but it’s something which always leaves me with what I tend to label in user experience as “excitement sinkhole”.
When booting the app, if you’ve spent any money recently, the balance on the card will show a number that it out of date. So the first thing that happens is that the balance figure updates, refreshing to show the new balance amount.
Because, if you’ve used your card, the up to date balance will always be lower than the previous balance - it means that the first thing you see whenever you open the app, is your money going down. No one likes seeing money go down, right?
It kind of creates a negative experience whenever you launch the app, even if you’re not that aware of it.
Sometimes I forget that I’ve used my card, and I get a little bit of excitement as I realise I have more money on the card than I thought I had; before it updates and then goes to a much lower number. Extra disappointment.
It may seem a tiny thing but it affects the experience for me.
Not showing the balance until it’s been checked as up to date would solve this problem.
I get where you’re coming from and agree with it. However, I’m unconvinced that outright hiding the balance until it’s confirmed up to date is a good long term solution when the app is designed to still somewhat function with poor or no connectivity. Perhaps greying it out with a small “last updated” date+time would be preferable?
For curiosity, what platform are you running the app on? I ask because I have seen this be a bigger issue on Android than on iOS where the card balance is updated inside the app by background tasks and push notification triggers.
Not displaying the account balance if it is inaccurate and being updated is just my suggestion - I’d probably show an updating animation in the meantime. When there is no data, there’s no reason it couldn’t remain as the not-yet-updated amount, with a little icon to indicate it’s potentially out of date.
I’m sure the designers at Monzo could think of something appropriate
