Starling Discussion & Feedback

I’m not that keen - phoning is annoying and too much scope for mistakes.

I’d go First Direct, I hear very good things about them. But I don’t like the fact they’re part of HSBC. I like to try and stay with ethical companies.

Been on and off with the Co-op Bank for years - but they’re so far behind with their tech. I got an email about cheque imaging ‘coming soon’ with them. I’d assume that’ll bring a redesign of the app with it. So maybe they’ll do a full overhaul?

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I wouldn’t count on it - I thought Coop had only just refreshed their app & online banking?

Yeah, they’ll probably just bolt something on for the cheque imaging.

It would be good if there was one ICS (image clearing system) app and any/all banks apps could link to it.

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The US has some cheque cashing “parlors” where people with no bank accounts (or for whatever possibly shady reasons would not be able to deposit a cheque in their bank) can exchange cheques for cash instantly, at the expense of huge commissions (as the establishment has to protect themselves against fraud and bounced cheques).

I wonder if a business could set up a similar service online, where you can cash in cheques via the app and get the funds via Faster Payments no matter which bank you’re at.

23 posts were merged into an existing topic: Starling Feedback

I’ve been using both Monzo and Starling for a few months now. Although i only use these accounts casually for spending money and not paying bills/direct debits etc some banks seem to be ahead in regards to features most of us use everyday.

I’m using iOS i know that some things are slower to get pushed out to Android so apologies if i mention something that others can’t chime in yet.

Things Monzo does better (Personally) – :monzo:

• Notifications – Awesome!, the speed, alert noise (Kerr-ching!) informative and they have fun emojis! :grinning: plus it’s different! Glad this is one thing that isn’t getting lost in the sea of notifications.

• Support desk – Only had to use it twice for errors (Not due to Monzo) but staff were quick and helpful.

• The Home screen – The graph and transactions never seem too cluttered and all the info I need at a glance is there. I know some people don’t like look of the graph but i prefer it to Starlings ‘Pulse’ which takes up too much screen real estate for me.

• Able to search transactions - So useful genuinely shocked that every bank app doesn’t have this feature.

• Transparency always the first to tell you what they’re up too (even if they are slow to get something out) I appreciate the fact that the good and bad is brought to the customers attention but they seem very slow to get out the features that seemingly everyone is asking for (apple pay, save the change etc).

• Use of Touch ID when paying someone (as opposed to password on Starling)

Things Starling does better – :purple_heart:

• Pin code fallback on entry should touch ID fail

• Apple pay!

• Full card info in the app, including the CVV number (don’t have to dig out my card every time I buy something online)

• Goals! – Everything about this is better (currently) than pots – Able to personalize them with pictures, schedule payments into them etc.

• Able to edit/remove payees transfer contacts AND add pictures to personalize them.
(An over zealous spellcheck means i have a payee spelt wrong on Monzo and no way to edit/delete or personalize)

• Interest on accounts

• Although all the fintech banks seem to be offering similar features starling always seems to be first (In the UK anyway) and it never seems like a rush job, everything new always works and works well…at least for me – Example - Apple pay, Goals, Marketplace

These are what I’ve found after using both accounts causally for the last few months. I’m sure people are having different experiences based on how they need to use the accounts, but this is what i found to be helpful features.
I feel although a lot of Fintech companies are moving very quickly, but in regards to adding the features that affect day to day life Monzo seems to be very slow. Which is a shame as i like the bank/app/community and secretly hope that they start winning the battle of the banks…

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I definitely prefer Starling’s goals to the Monzo pot. What I’d ideally like is the best of both worlds. Have the mechanics of goals by default (non-segrated funds essentially so you won’t incur overdraft / declines for non-sufficient funds) but with an option to fully segrate the funds (now you have the pots behaviour)

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“The most important one for me is being able to search!”

Interesting that you mention that arthur. That was the thing I loved about Monzo, that was until I moved from IOS to Android a month ago and discovered that functionality no longer available to me.

Even more frustrating as I fully moved my banking to the current account (and all the hassle that comes with switching) back in September.

Thankfully my Starling card arrived today and it has a switching service which will make it easier to move away from Monzo if I so choose.

Still feel totally gutted that a service I absolutely loved and invested time in has shown such shocking disregard for its Android customers by omitting the most basic and important functionality. It defies belief that they have spent time introducing pulse whilst failing to address this.

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We have search on Android… The search icon appears as you scroll the feed.

What functionality are you referring to?

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You can not search by amount, nor by original foreign currency amount, or by original mastercard merchant name, or by date, etc. There seem so many search options missing.

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I would expect to be able to search by saying incoming or outgoing or all, date from and/or to or all, amount equal to or less than or more than or all, reference, merchant name in full or part with lowenstein differential algorithm and/or wild cards…

While we have only a few years data we can easily scroll down the transactions, but we have to think long term and how we are going to select one or a few items out of decades of many years of data.

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What is the use case for this? I can’t remember ever having to search for a transaction I made a decade ago in any bank. And if I was doing some deep accounting like that, I would almost certainly export a CSV of my transactions and do it on my computer. Monzo is way ahead of other banks here, as all the ones I’ve used limit how far back you can export transactions from.

The problem with search options to cater for every single scenario is that it could greatly complicate the interface (as well as take development time from other features). I think it’s important to think about what we’d realistically need to do with the search.

For my part, I’d like the date filter to allow custom dates. I often need to review transactions between a certain set of dates, and other bank sites I’ve used make this very easy. Monzo only offers this/last week/month/year, wick I don’t really find useful at all.

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Just last week I had to find the transaction for my coffee machine which I purchased last summer in order to claim a replacement under warranty.

With my old bank I would have been looking through several month worth of statements. On Monzo it took about 5 seconds and a couple of search terms.

For me this is one of the best features of monzo

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I don’t know how you find stuff. Say I spent £34.56 at a merchant I think is called SleazyJetz say mid October but not sure of the amount. I can’t search for all transactions between £30-£35, or transactions between 12/10/2017-18/10/2016 nor type in Easy or Jet and it find SleasyJetz. The only way I can fund stuff is scroll down and visually glance at every one until I find it.

I am using Android. Maybe the search functiin does more on iOS? but for me I can only use it to search for a merchant name as it appears in the timeline after beautification and not as in the original Mastercard data feed. Not much use if you can’t remember the merchant name!

Yeah, sorry. iOS version is great for this

image

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It seems to be more sophisticated on iOS.
You could enter something like “>£34.00 <£35.00”, for example, and you get all transactions within that range.

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Went into Mountain Warehouse today. Paid with card (obviously). Chap heard the ding on my phone and said “ah - instant notification - nice”.

I said “Yeah - handy, this modern banking thing”

He said “Sure thing - I’ve got that with Monzo”

I said “Smart, I’m with the other team”

We shook hands - a nice warm feeling. Not exactly North and South Korea, but nice nonetheless. :grinning:

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I prefer the custom Monzo ka-ching :slight_smile:

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This has been covered below. I’m talking about the ability to filter transactions by vendor, category, amount, date and location. You can do this on ios but not on Android which is a massive FY to Android users.

Again, I find it staggering that Monzo have not addressed this and appear to have prioritised rolling out Pulse instead.

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