HSBC updated their app today to include a “freeze card” functionality. HSBC’s app is still miles behind Monzo in terms of freshness, features and usability, but this update reminded me of what I think is a core flaw in Monzo app’s design. Even after Monzo shutted down it’s prepaid scheme, the app remained too card centric. I think that’s the main reason why people get confused about where to download their bank statements from, and I feel the problem will remain until the account comes forward and the card takes a step back.
I mean, the account tab has a card icon. The daily bank transfer limit is in the card’s settings page. Statements and account details are in what looks more like a user profile page while card details are obvious. Pots are virtual accounts but are designed to look like cards.
Monzo needs to address this, cause if it continues adding features on this “broken” UX, the app will become even more complicated to use.
For most people their experience with any bank is rather card-centric. Add the iconic hot coral Monzo card to the mix and it should be little surprise Monzo is more card-centric than average
Really? Well, my bank interactions might be primarily cards centric, that’s true, but my banking app/website interactions are very much focused on direct debits, standing orders, bank statements bank transfers etc, and I do think the current ux and terminology can be really confusing for these aspects, as they are so different from what I’m used to. But then, I may not be “most people”
The representation of a card within the mobile wallet app only exists as we’re quite early in the technology and skeuomorphism is still important so people get the concept - it isn’t tokenised card data as cards are not the exclusive carriers of that data. It is just data.
Actually, it is. Read the EMV tokenisation framework. The DAN (PAN presented by a mobile wallet) is linked back to the real PAN on the card. This is why you can enter your card’s PAN on TfL’s site and see mobile wallet payments made from the linked DAN.
Technically it doesn’t have to be a physical card, but it’s definitely the modality referred to in the underlying framework. So it is more than skeuomorphism, the standards are very much centred around the PAN being on a physical card.
If it doesn’t need to be a physical card then creating a digital representation of that physical item in an app is surely the definition of skeuomorphism?
Doesn’t need to be technically, but read the framework. A quick search of it reveals 305 references to the word ‘card’ - safe to say, I think it’s intended a card is the source of the PAN
I’m reminded of the story of a millennial who, upon seeing a 3.5” floppy disc for the first time, said, ”ooh look, a 3D-printed version of the ‘Save’ icon!”
While you might be right, one of the big draws of monzo was supposed to be the ux of the app. And I have to say, that this hasn’t really kept up since the end of the prepay. Things have been bolted on, when it may be time to do a reboot. But that’s just an opinion
Remember, millennials are 1982-2004 birth years. Plenty of us will darn well remember the save icon floppy. I could say something about our generation and the reality, but I don’t wanna make this a political or generational war
That said, I myself don’t think of the save icon as actually representing a floppy disk (disk, with a k, since it isn’t round - I’ll note) anymore, I’ll admit even though if I had to think about it I knew it did.
being of the older generation, I remember the days when I sat drinking coffee in an IT dept while loading up one 3.5" floppy disk after another, dozens of them.
We had a company send us a 5.25" floppy as part of their marketing and we cracked up. My colleague cut a 3.5" corner out of that floppy and sent it back to them with a Post-it Note saying it would not fit!
As an early millennial I was fortunate enough to be able to play around in my youth cannibalising old broken desktop PCs into working units. At the time, most of them didn’t even have a cd drive and windows had to be installed via a series of 34 (if I remember rightly) floppy disks.
Though probably most 10 year olds didn’t have access to the same stuff and some in my area were more interested in petrol bombing cars instead.
