PayPoint Shops don’t know how to process cash deposits

This evening I went to a Local Co-op shop intending to deposit cash into my Monzo bank account. I asked the cashier if I could deposit some cash into my bank account via PayPoint. The cashier was unsure about this and called the Shop Manager. The manager said that they did not possess the relevant equipment/training to do this.The PayPoint logo was displayed above the kiosk.

I tried an One Stop further along the road. The same routine played out almost exactly as before. This shop also displayed the PayPoint logo.

Both shops are listed on the PayPoint website. I don’t think Monzo should advise customers that they are able to deposit cash via PayPoint when they clearly aren’t.

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This is not a Monzo issue but a staff/training issue at the stores as per the managers comments in your post

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I get it’s frustrating but it’s not Monzos fault that Paypoint don’t provide adequate training for their machines.

In future, you just use the magstripe and swipe the card.

There’s an email address you can send these branches too and Monzo will reccomend them to Paypoint for training.

@HughWells Paypoint issue!

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Hate to tell them I told them so but

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They might, but at least it would work.

This might be paypoints fault for not providing enough info to their shops, but Monzo decided to use them over the post office and started advertising a service that doesn’t work for some people when it might not have been ready to advertise.

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Really sorry to hear about this experience, Adam.

It’s certainly not up to scratch. We are confident that these experiences are rare in the grand scheme of things, but they shouldn’t be happening at all. Would you mind letting us know where this happened? We can then forward to PayPoint. Ultimately it’s a breach of their agreement with PayPoint, so it’s important that PayPoint are aware.

Please feel free to DM me if you’d rather not publicly post the locations.

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Paypoint is the poundland of finance.
There is a lot of junk

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Most PayPoint stores didn’t know how to add top ups when I was topping up cards in around 2007 and it appears from this that some still do not know how to do a top up 11 years later.

I think the main problems are:

  1. The user interface on the operators end is not intuitive. The amount of time I waited whilst operators fiddled around trying to figure out how to top up a card goes into hours. Surely there should be a big button on their main screen saying “TOP UP A CARD” but no it appears to be locked away somewhere and the feature requires wizardry to access.

  2. Very few people use PayPoint to top up a card. The vast majority of transactions are people paying a bill so at some stores it may be a case that the operator has only ever used it to receive bill payments with and they probably never even knew card top ups is a thing.

  3. The stores with PayPoint machines have no accountability. PayPoint doesn’t want to rock the boat with their terminal operators as ultimately they are their clients and they are in a cut throat market where their operators are at risk of switching to payzone at the best of times, let alone if they got told they’re doing it all wrong and need to retrain their staff.

I fear Simon’s request to name the stores so PayPoint can sort them out will lead nowhere. PayPoint will just apologise and pretend that they’ve retrained the store and it will be forgotten about.

PayPoint was a bad choice for a partnership in terms of usability but perfect for Monzo in terms of cost and commitment. Those who have been following Monzo will know how they really feel about cash. They want people paying in and withdrawing cash as little as possible as it is a costly nuisance to them, so a cash deposit service that is awful doesn’t really bother them.

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That’s a bit cynical. Why would they launch a feature that they thought was going to be awful just to hear people say how awful it is? It would make more sense to just not bother

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Could someone who knows tell us the steps required in detail for a cash deposit @ PayPoint terminal so we can instruct them ourselves? That way will get more locations up to speed and get to deposit cash where want to.

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It’d be great if Monzo could produce an official looking card, that folk could just print off to hand to paypoint operators with brief instructions on.

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Co-op, 12-14 Madrid Road, Guildford
One stop, 5-7 Old Palace Road, Guildford

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I’ve used PayPoint previously to use the collect+ service and it is very hit and miss on who actually knows how to operate it. Most will just say no we don’t do that here.

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How about if on the Account > Add Money > Cash page there was a link at the bottom under the paypoint locations link to a page with cashier instructions? Benefit is that we can make sure we get our money deposited when needed first time and the retailer will know for the next deposit.

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Unless staff are doing it all the time the necessary steps will likely be forgotten and the user experience remain poor. Many of the stores PayPoint are based in are ran by individual proprietors who received little training and generally aren’t IT savvy. Not to mention the PayPoint system appearing to be difficult to use at the best of times.

I personally don’t see the purpose of the PayPoint integration and don’t see other banks clamouring to join to make it mainstream. Most providers have centralised around the Post Office and people seem pleased with this; the effort would have been better placed getting Post Office integration working.

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I think that the training is available and that some PayPoint operators do make their shops aware. As I posted in another thread, I’ve been in two SPAR shops 5 and a half hours away from each other and they both new exactly what to do with no prompting from me.

I did notice though that SPAR seem to have their PayPoint integrated with their PoS system, they swiped my card through the till and just have a separate box for topping-up electricity keys (not the usual yellow PayPoint box with a keypad, so maybe they’ve built a more intuitive interface on their PoS system?

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Part of the reason (note: part) is very likely that it’s cheaper and saves them money for a service they aren’t fond of (cash).

You get what you pay for.

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When I used to go up to London reasonably regularly, I’d (try to) pay the congestion charge in advance, before leaving town (I lived in Bournemouth at the time).

It was ridiculous. A lot of shops would say, ‘but we’re not in London, you can’t do that here’ - yes you can.
Some would just outright refuse and say they don’t do it without checking or looking at their pay point machine at all.
Others would try figure it out but then give up and say that they don’t provide that service - yes you do.
Eventually I found one shop that let me actually look at their pay point machine. I figured it out in seconds, it was very easy and pretty hard to cock up.

I imagine they’ve changed now - but the terminal had a one line LCD display, up, down, left, right keys and a keyboard. All you did was press up or down to scroll through all the companies and services until you got to ‘London Congestion Charge’, selected it, then it said, ‘enter vehicle reg’, you used the keyboard to enter the car reg and pressed enter, that was pretty much it.

After I’d shown them how to do it, I had to go to that particular shop every time - because I knew that they were the only ones who would actually let me pay the charge there.

I don’t understand how they can’t do it, or why they need extra training. It’s kind of pathetic.

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It’s not really hard to understand. It’s paypoint. They’re not exactly a centre of excellence in their industry. Do they provide training for free to the shops? Do they mandate it? Do they really enforce any rules? Paypoint is a quick way of getting people in your shop to pay bills. They’re not going to know about new or obscure features and probably don’t care.

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Tried to deposit cash. Cashier said he is not sure… I asked him to swipe a card. That’s it. Deposited without any problems :champagne:
image

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