Issue:
I have number of payees set on my account, landlord, credit cards, family etc etc. I use them each month to make my payments. None of them are new.
Details to reproduce:
Select any payee, normally the next step would be the screen to input the amount, but instead I am now shown a screen where I am forced to choose between this payee being a business or personal account.
Regardless of which I choose, I am then shown a “payment details not verified” screen that I must click continue on.
Then on the payment screen, I see a further warning dialog, and when I try to make a payment, I get a dialog prompt warning me about scam.
The payment details are correct, but it seems that Monzo:
Doesn’t remember which account type I select with the payee, forcing me to reselect EVERY TIME.
the validator doesn’t work and flags everything as unverified.
The former is a bug that the team is working on, I think I recall it doesn’t remember unless the check actually succeeds.
The latter should start to go away as more banks join the Confirmation of Payee scheme.
We are just one of the first to start rolling it out visibly in the app to get feedback early, so if you are paying people who bank with another bank who has rolled out the responding to check requests part, then you’re fine but if you’re not, then you will see the unable to verify warning screen more frequently.
The warning screen exists so that you are aware while making a payment that we could not verify that you are paying the person you think you are, and that the confirmation check failed but it may be okay. It is important because otherwise a fraudster could take advantage of the lack of warning screen to help their scams.
The thing is, it fails the check even Monzo to Monzo, it seems because they might be using their full long name on the account, where as I am just using their short name “Samuel Windberg Mount-Batten” vs “Sam Mount”. Monzo appears to use the name from my address book when paying via contacts.
It’s also a big big big assumption that I am even typing the account name and not the name I know them buy, like “Mum”.
Also it’s dumb that it needs to be an exact string match. I got an error because I had entered “Company Name” but it told me the real name was “Company Name Ltd”.
In any case, having just paid all my bills the screen was very annoying and would prefer the previous behaviour.
It may “dumb” but these are the rules that the banks now have to follow. The exact name matching is particularly irritating so I hope it can be finessed a little in some way as the usage data develops and grows.
Sadly, I haven’t seen that from any bank I use with this yet. At the moment I’m working on the assumption that “close enough” would be better described as “insanely close”.
I’m sort of hoping that eases up a bit as time goes on.
Even when making a payment to a payee where the recipient bank doesn’t support the lookup service, I am not presented with 3 additional confirmation prompts, whilst also having to select the personal/business account type.
It’s very very high friction, especially when the payee info has been used for literally years, and now I get a popup telling me I might be a victim of a scam each time I make a payment.
It’s a shame this feature was implemented in this way, meanwhile, each month when I pay my bills and rent, I have to still assign it to the right category as the app can’t remember.
The Monzo iOS app is leaps and bounds ahead of the other banks (NatWest) so this little frustration I have about this screen is no big deal. I’m happy and still would recommend Monzo overall.
