Just a quick one, because all my contacts using Monzo are on Android, I don’t yet see them on the new Payments with Friends feature in the latest TestFlight release of 1.8.2 (227). However, what is surfaced is my own contact. I believe that should be filtered out as while it does allow me to proceed to the next screen, I am (rightly) blocked from trying to pay myself. Imo, it’s not a great experience to present.
For reference, I have only one phone number in my contact card and it is the same one registered with Monzo in addition to it being correctly set as me in iOS.
Do other Monzo user have to be on the TestFlight app for them to show up in the list of people to send to…
I have a few friends who have Monzo and its only me in the list.
They have to opt in to allow to be paid? That seems a bit a strange. It would be annoying if some people decline that opt in due to not understanding it then you cant pay them.
Just thinking of my family… I normally have to hassle them to set up their accounts on things correctly - would be bad to have another piece of friction when Im already trying to convince them to move full monzo
The reason for that is that you’re allowing other users to see that you’re a Monzo user too, the two elements of the feature haven’t been set up to be independent from each other.
You can’t tap on the Contacts tab without being asked to opt in though so inevitably most users will find the option in time & you can always chase them…I know what you mean about that being a hassle but I think this will be less of an issue than in other instances because they’ve got a good incentive to sort it, if they want to receive that money from you!
I like what Monzo have done here in terms of looking out for privacy (not grabbing phone contacts and putting on server) however I do wonder whether this specific opt-in is a bit too cautious - would people really be upset if it were possible to see who was using monzo by trying to send them money? Plus the converse (to accept money, I have to be visible as a monzo user to all my contacts) might seem a bit strange to the privacy concerned user?
I certainly wouldn’t mind if I was listed without opting in first & I can’t think of any reason why users would be more concerned about privacy because of the send money feature. So I’m guessing that it’s been added in advance of the request money feature. If you are being spammed, you can switch off the feature until the user is blocked.
I suppose it would be much easier for people to spam users with requests for money, if they can spot Monzo users from a list of phone numbers that they’ve acquired & this is a safeguard in case that becomes a problem?
I’ll say this much, it does make a lot of sense when you also consider that request money is also an upcoming feature and that this opt-in is still significantly easier than trying to get friends to somehow register with PayM.
When you consider the wider world of things like PayM (of course, in the future if/when Monzo support it), you may want your PayM registered number to point elsewhere and without the option to disable phone number based payments on Monzo, every other Monzo user could end up paying your Monzo account and not the other account you expected.
You may think that’s a non-issue but I’ve seen it happen with Barclays and PingIt. Even if the PayM registered number points to Lloyds, other PingIt users may end up paying the Barclays account of the other person and cause confusion.