After commenting on another thread about how Apple / Apple Music / iTunes are displayed in-app, (Merchant Data Corrections), I’ve been thinking more about the topic.
There’s many brands (I’m sure) where seeing a sub-brand recognised in app would achieve one of objectives; see what you’re spending your money on and give you financial control.
With this in mind, perhaps we (as a community) could identify examples of parent brand vs sub-brand, as it might strengthen the case for sub-brand recognition? I’ll start below with a few I’d personally like to see shown as individual merchants / payments, but feel free to add yours too!
iTunes Apple Music
Uber Uber Eats *It seems when you order via the app, its listed as Uber, but if you order via desktop it’ll correctly show as Uber Eats. Has anyone else had this issue?
I’d love to hear what other people think about the topic, and other examples you may have!
Not sure if you’d call this a sub brand or not, but before going full Monzo, my Barclays app would differentiate between Tesco and Tesco fuel whereas Monzo just calls them both Tesco. I’ve not used other supermarket filling stations with my Monzo card yet, but based on how Monzo group groceries and fuel into one merchant for Tesco I would assume the same applies for others as well.
I have pots for shopping and fuel and had an IFTTT trigger which would auto withdraw from a pot depending on the merchant name, but I ended up disabling it pretty quickly after realising the filing station and supermarket were being grouped together and everything was just coming out of shopping. Hardly a deal breaker to have to do it manually, and to be fair the fuel is categorised as transport (so it doesn’t mess up my budget numbers and shows Monzo can tell the difference) but I could see this kind of distinction being useful for other merchants as well.
I’m not disagreeing that they’re both Tesco (or Apple, or whatever), but it does help differentiate at a glance in the feed which was which, especially in my case at least, when a transaction amount for groceries in the supermarket would be a similar amount to a full tank of fuel.
Thanks for sharing this example @BenP25 - exactly the kind of example I was thinking about! Interesting that another (high street) bank can make this differentiation.
One of the problems here is that sometimes Uber process Uber Eats transactions using their Uber merchant info and vice versa. We have no control over this!
This is an annoyance I have with Monzo. Exactly the same as you, shopping and fuel comes from Tesco and it seems to categorise whichever I use last for the next purchase.
I just have to remember to change it but it means I’ve combined my IFTTT for fuel and food, rather than have them separately which I don’t really mind, but would be easier to have apart.
I’ve got Amazon, Amazon Prime, Amazon Music, I used to have Amazon Marketplace. At one point I had Kindle. Please, just Amazon.
Xbox stuff variously comes in as Microsoft, Microsoft Store, Xbox and Xbox Live. These days everything goes through the Microsoft online storefront, so it should just be Microsoft.
But honestly, I don’t see much hope of us settling this. For everyone who wants it my way, there’s someone else who feels the opposite. I don’t think a policy either way from Monzo will help either, as these often feel different to me on a case by case basis. It’s a difficult problem to begin with and it’s exacerbated by merchant strings that seem to change on a daily process.
The Tesco fuel thing is annoying. The raw transaction data says TESCO PAY AT PUMP, and Monzo is correctly categorising as Transport, rather than Groceries, but still just displays as ‘Tesco’ - @Dan5 is this one something you could take a look at?
I think that’s probably by design - we aim to have the overall merchant name so you’ll see all Tesco purchases listed as Tesco, rather than Tesco Watford etc.
When I’m back at work tomorrow I’ll find out though
To be honest, I’d like the ability to group or ungroup certain vendors manually.
The Amazon and Apple examples - I find the separation useful in separating things that are “one of purchases” and things that are rolling subscriptions.
In a similar vein, there’s a few local shops that seemingly have multiple payment terminals set up differently - merging them into one would be super too
objectives; see what you’re spending your money on and give you financial control.
Apple Music
I’m living in Yorkshire and I have no idea why I picked on Watford