Ok then. You know what I’m going to say next…
On iOS… 
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It’s just something you have to live with… it annoyed me for ages that my payment to RCI finance was called ‘Renault Finance’ in Monzo because that’s what had ended up in the database (the payment had nothing to do with Renault). It never got fixed.
Currently my xbox subscription flips randomly between xbox and microsoft.
With companies having multiple trading names it’s never going to work to have a central database but I imagine the amount of work to handle that at a per-customer level would be enormous.
Probably should be “RCI Financial Services” officially as these are all trading names having worked on this project.
“Renault Finance”
“Nissan Finance”
“Dacia Finance”
“Infiniti Financial Services” < Just to be different.
I would have thought it would be fairly easy for the customer to name these whatever they want like a label, and it doesn’t get fed back as a suggestion.
You should see what some of these companies do though. Renault Finance use at least three different names that I’ve seen that are all different versions of the RCI financial services - sometimes they set up a new one under a slightly different name mid credit agreement for seemingly no reason.
The same applies to o2 who often use some random combinations of o2/telefonica and the name on the mandate can vary from customer to customer.
What you see as the merchant name on the mandate might not be what somebody else sees on their mandate. I have two o2 contracts which have separate direct debits, both are personal contracts and were taken out online but the merchant name on the mandate is different 🤷🏻
Merchant enrichment data helps make it clearer in lots of cases who it’s for.
Don’t forget as well that there are now quite a few companies such as Go Cardless who process direct debits for smaller companies - sometimes using their merchant name or a random name. They might use the same one for several different merchants. Multiple customers might submit different suggestions and one might get accepted and then it will appear incorrectly for other people.
It can be a minefield, but IMO overall the merchant enrichment Monzo offer is still an improvement on what most banks offer. We don’t always get it right and there’s definitely room to improve our tooling but it’s not one of our biggest priorities at the moment as far as I’m aware!
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As a customer that’s not really my problem. I expect you, my bank, to provide me with accurate information on all areas of my banking from your interfaces to statements.
Wouldn’t it be better not to do the enrichment.
Let the people who don’t care just see whatever was on the mandate like my Lloyds account.
For those that are wanting relatable names that make sense allow them to rename them like it was a pot.
Then you need to reset your expectations. They’re unrealistic.
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Is it unrealistic to expect accurate information?
I think your bar is set too low
Yes.
If Google and Apple can’t manage it for their maps products with all of their resources, Monzo aren’t going to.
(Of course, the question as to whether enrichment is appropriate as a result of this answer is a completely different one. Fortunately there’s a vast selection of banks that don’t offer it.)
That’s a silly comparison and I’m sure you realise it
In general Apple/Google Maps are very good for the U.K. at least. Travelled quite a bit with Apple Maps and had no issues besides the teething issues they initially had with sending people into rivers, but that was very very early days for it
As for Monzo, they have a bunch of transaction data, people recommending changes and location data from devices. So they can see what store is there, what the merchant name is, what MCC it is, what amount the purchase was for, what the customer said it was
It isn’t difficult to do well, for instance I don’t think I’ve had problems with Starling yet unless the transaction is processed offline, incl direct debits, to which I have 2 O2 ones and 2 AmEx ones, one from Aqua and a host of regular card payments
I didn’t think so but thanks for being insulting.
Just wanted to point out that we can’t really use this as a reliable factor in the direct debit naming. If we could, I’m sure more services would allow customer recommended changes but as it’s usually not all that reliable, I don’t think it adds value. A consideration, perhaps, but not a confirmed data point.
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I don’t see it as insulting, my apologies if you do. I just think a silly comparison is silly
I’m not saying it’s reliable on its own, but as I mentioned Monzo has a host of data to go on
What’s that got to do with anything? We’re talking about merchant data which (in Google’s case) seems to be as crowd sourced as Monzo is and just as prone to errors in Name, Location and everything else.
It’s realistic to expect merchant enrichment Monzo offer to be say 95% correct.
If its was 5% correct, people would be going ape.
It’s never going to be 100% perfect due to the reasons @Dan5 touched on. I’m sure they’ll keep working on it until they get it closer to 99.9% for now its hardly a priority.
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Ah, I forgot both actually had merchant data on there so presumed you were talking about maps
But I would say they’re pretty good on this, too. Not seen an incorrect entry yet besides the opening times