Location based splitting

When opting to split a bill, I would like Monzo to look up my phone’s location, see which of my monzo-using contacts are nearby, and automatically suggest them to split with

Sadly, I’m not sure this would be easy given the privacy focused way we currently handle contacts :confused: :

I agree, it would be a useful feature!

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Seems a bit overkill imo but still if you think it’s useful then it’d be at least nice for it to be opt-in…

What I think is useful means very little :wink:

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This would be horrible from a privacy perspective, opt-in or not.

It would be much better to get the core functionality good enough that you wouldn’t need to agree to allow other bank users to track you (:scream:)

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Why would it be horrible from an opt in perspective? I don’t care if my friends know where I am, which is ultimately all this is. Also, this would only show locations if people were nearby anyway which if they’re your friends you probably already know.

I do agree it needs to be opt in and ideally with a level of control, but it isn’t that bad. Snapchat gives an ‘add nearby’ that lets you add anyone near you if you both go to the same screen. Maybe this? Everyone has to go to the split the bill screen?

Being able to determine if they are nearby is the issue.

You can spoof your geo-location on devices. Monzo trusting your phone application to provide its geo-location to then divulge information on other bank customers is insane, whether they are your friends or not.

How do you manage who you have allowed or disallowed? How do you make sure that everyone is aware, every time, who has access to this?

This functionality would be much easier to achieve with some kind of QR code which everyone scans from the person splitting the bill, or a simpler means that doesn’t allow live-querying of other users.

I’m not disagreeing with the aim of the idea :slight_smile:, i just think there are easier ways to leverage location than allowing users which may not understand the implication to breach their own privacy.

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It doesn’t need to send location to other users. Only to Monzo. Monzo can then figure out who is near each other. Why would you spoof location to break a feature?

Make it opt in and only send location if everyone opens a split the bill nearby screen.

It wouldn’t matter though because If I control two contacts in my address book, i.e. two fakeable locations I can triangulate exactly where you are pretty quickly (think hot-cold-hot-cold).

Make it opt in and only send location if everyone opens a split the bill nearby screen.

:thinking:

This is a better limitation but it will still depend on remote verification of location (you can use location for anti-fraud because that’s only for protecting yourself).

You’d need some irrefutable proof of proximity (and/or explicit consent), like bluetooth or something, which can’t be exploited remotely.

That’s why QR code came to mind, because i’m not sure about complexity vs security of using Bluetooth for this. All Monzo devices in the vicinity would have to talk first to figure out who is who, or Monzo would have to send you the bluetooth addresses of your entire contact list for your device to use for filtering.

Whatever they implement I think it must be extremely simple and secure. They are a bank after all.

QR codes are so faffy and awful as a UX though… I do see your point but still. It seems a pretty extreme worry and you’d have to have a good general idea where they might be anyway. If my friends want to know where I am they can ask me lol.

Do you remember Google Latitude that put you and your friends on a map? I loved that. It never caught on because people were worried but it was brilliant.

Is it similar to Swarm? Loads of people seem to like that but I’ve never used it personally.

Yes, but wow… I don’t know anyone who uses Foursquare and haven’t in years.

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I had thought about suggesting a QR code but stupidly went for the more controversial option! Thinking about it more though, QR could actually work better for quick and easy splitting (and no doubt is more easily implemented) but that isn’t at the root of why I never split bills in monzo. The main reason is because, as far as I can see, it just uses monzo.me to get other people’s share back, which doesn’t really give me clarity on what my true expenditure is (if I pay £60 at a restaurant but get £45 of that back, my total spent for the transaction still shows as £60). I would basically like the £45 received through the split bill feature, to be deducted from the restaurant line item before the line item is deducted from my balance. I think I’ve seen this being discussed on other threads so maybe not worth digging into it here, but even if my original suggestion was implemented, I still wouldn’t use splitting unless it behaved as I just described above (and yes, I appreciate that it would be tricky to implement!)