I agree. That’s precisely why I said I’d be happy to have the debate elsewhere.
Yes I have and they have offered no solution. But bear in mind the interface is probably not trivial and therefore there are probably differences in the way it is invoked. That is where I think the problem lies.
Great. I don’t have a lot of sympathy with their developers though. Plenty of others have managed it, so it can’t be rocket science.
To help you with your baseline, I do know what I’m doing with technology, and I have worked in and with finance systems for most of my career. I’m not just picking on Monzo, but I do think a banking up should be up there with the best.
The fundamental difference between us, then, is that for me a banking app being up there with the rest would be other apps being more like Monzo and removing some of the unnecessary barriers to access
When N26 were still operating in the UK I got locked out of their app because I used it infrequently enough that the lock pattern reset and I forgot my PIN.
When my old phone broke, getting the First Direct app working on my new phone was a MASSIVE pain in the bottom that required resetting the tens of different passwords they use in order to be able to have them deactivate the app over the phone so I could reactivate it on my new phone
Updates have logged me out of my Halifax and MBNA apps. I need to use my password AND memorable information to log back in, so I haven’t bothered (these cards get paid off by DD anyway)
None of these barriers make the apps any more secure for me, and in the majority of cases they actively put me off using them. Monzo, on the other hand? Easy as, and still secure.
I’m not worried about the lack of a PIN on the app as my phone has a PIN, it locks at the drop of a hat (low inacitivity timeout, locks instantly when turned ‘off’, and I turn it off every time before I put it down).
In a nutshell, I don’t think either of us a ‘wrong’, necessarily. Rather, we’re two different customer profiles. I’m a customer who is a good match for Monzo; you’re a customer who, if the issue is that important to you and you’re not willing to use phone locking or security features to manage the app instead, maybe you’re a better match for another bank. As I’m fairly certain that Monzo is betting there are lot more customers like me out there.
Sorry, I’m still not going to accept this. You can have the Ap the way you want it without denying me the option to have it the way I want it.
I don’t get why Monzo, and a lot of its community want to fight so hard not to do something that
(a) can easily be made optional
(b) is good practice (OK you can disagree if you want)
(c) can’t be that hard to do given that everyone else has done it
(d) would bring Android users into line with what iPhone users apparently get for free
No I am not going to change my entire computing environment to Apple, just to fix a problem that is Monzo’s responsibility.
Note that this is my only, but very significant, issue with Monzo. I like the rest of what they are doing.
This all feels way off topic for this thread (@AlanDoe in case he’s feeling keen to spin the conversation off)
But! Some thoughts:
Lots of banks are horribly performative with security.
It’s good to have different approaches - as others have said you can then pick what’s best for you
My worries about Monzo actually aren’t about Monzo, but about my email (which is, I think, why people bring it up a lot). If someone has access to my email then they get into my bank account, but helpfully that’s prompted me to move to a more secure provider.
Honestly you could find out lots about me from the Contacts app, probably enough to apply for credit, etc.
But you don’t see people asking for “extra security” on that.
I’m pretty happy with security given that my phone auto-locks very quickly when not used and Face ID will lock the phone if it detects a would-be intruder.
The practical risk to me and my data is very low, and efforts would be best spent setting up 2FA for emails (as you say) so that nobody can either use your email to target you for fraud or reset account details via a compromised email account. Even then, most scams still rely on you “doing something wrong” or missing a red flag warning sign at a later stage as well.
This poster has a phone with broken biometrics, and has had this explained to them on several occasions. The discussion goes round in circles for a few dozen posts, nothing happens, then they pop back up in a few months and the whole cycle starts again.
Unless you have some inside information, it’s difficult to believe that First Direct’s service has deteriorated for 3 years.
They have acknowledged delays with answering calls which I believe is due to Covid-19 and suspended onboarding new customers for quite a while… but before then, you generally heard very few complaints about their service levels.
I wonder if part of the survey results come from the fact that a customer actively has to choose to be a customer of FD, Monzo or Starling.
Unlike other banks they can’t currently rely on parents opening accounts for their children who then just it by default as they get older.
phildawson
(Sorry, I will have to escalate this.)
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