It seems things are “running slowly” over there with their mobile apps causing money to disappear from view.
This got me wondering about how something like this happens to a major bank. I’d expect failsafes and redundant systems to be in place to prevent a major incident. As it’s their mobile apps with the issue, could it be tied to whatever links these to their legacy systems? I guess my question is, could this happen to Monzo? Or are Monzo systems inherently more resilient due to them being built from the ground up with tech being the focus?
Monzo systems ARE inherently more resilient due to them being built from the ground up and not just lots of incompatible legacy systems cobbled together
“I’ve used a couple of bank apps — Natwest in the UK and Capital One in the States — and they seem to be quite glitchy and break a lot,” said Ibrahim Salha, a Natwest customer and a colleague at The Independent. “I much prefer using Monzo, which is built with an app in mind, not as an afterthought. It’s a lot quicker and actually has features you’d want to use, plus it looks like an app designed by humans, not an algorithm.”
Not up to date on this but weren’t these apps developed by the same team initially? I know when I looked at them that they share a very large amount of code and API structure so it’s very suspicious that all on that list went down at the same time.
It’s very possible, for a long time, the TSB app was just a switch on the Lloyds app. Looking at it now, it appears to have been forked off quite some time ago and hasn’t received any of the more recent improvements to the Lloyds app though.
It’s for this viewpoint I’m a lot more confident in Monzo being future proof, and eager to trust the progression of new features in a current account with them, than an established bank.
Been talking to some people from various banks recently and it’s been really interesting to hear about what the causes of these types of issues are.
For the most part, all these issues are either simply degraded performance, or connectivity issues outside of the control of the banks. This is amplified by the mobile apps having incredibly poor retry mechanisms and some logging the user out if a single request fails.
Had issues on the 28th with TSB both online and with their new app (they currently still use Lloyds IT systems) the app disassociated with my account and I had to re-register with it as if I was a new user. I’m very surprised how little error management these apps can actually cope with.
