Putting control over categorisation back into your hands.
Maximise earnings from points. I make £100s per year but this could be much more if Monzo gave me access to my MCCs.
Assist in identifying transactions where the merchant doesn’t provide a descriptive name and Monzo’s team haven’t added a proper logo, name or location yet.
If Monzo is about empowering users why hide so much information? Is there ever a good reason not to allow us to easily see the MCC for each transaction?
At the moment there are a lot of people who find Monzo’s auto categorisation to be unhelpful or inaccurate at times. By giving us the information they use to do all this automatically, it will give users more choice and precision about categorising their spending and help with things like budgeting and trends.
The information is already there just massively oversimplified. Why not have to option to delve a bit deeper with say a tap on the automated category? I can’t see this doing any harm in any circumstance and many people would find it incredibly useful (especially as the data are there waiting to be used).
Anarchist
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What would it empower me to do if I could see this?
I don’t understand why I would need to see the MCC and, given I had to look that up … Manchester City Council? Melbournce Cricket Club?, I’m not sure it’s high on any list to add to the Monzo.
Out of interest, what would I use it for if it was displayed?
Genuine question with all of these things: What would you do with the Merchant Category Code information?
In my opinion, empowering users does not mean showing you every possible piece of information, it’s about giving you the right information and tools in the app to make decisions. Knowing that Amazon was MCC 5942 - Bookshops until April this year, when they changed to MCC 5999 - Miscellaneous and specialty retail outlets possibly isn’t the most useful to people.
Merchant Category Codes already power several app features such as transaction emoji, default categories, and gambling block off the top of my head. The majority of transactions just use one of the generic “not otherwise categorized” codes though.
Give you information about how merchants see themselves. Gives you info about payment processing.
Incredibly useful in troubleshooting any issues with payments, points, cashback.
Absolutely vital in reconciling statements. I have spent hours trying to work out what several transactions on my statement with cryptic names just as “MB” and “Mega Ent.” are. With the MCC this would have been solved in seconds.
Hey guess what? It’s not just about you. Because only others use a feature does not mean you get to veto it!
It’s about all the people who would find it useful on a daily basis as well as other metadata inexplicably hidden from us.
The data is already there, it costs nothing to shove it in a csv or wrap it in some CSS. What exactly would you lose from having this available?!
It’s not exactly a UX miracle to make it available to those who need it without clogging up feeds of others.
Woah woah woah. Can’t disagree with this more. If there are non-confidential data, making them available to the owners of that data can never be a bad thing. It can be tucked away inside a csv export or similar if you want, but there’s never ever a reason why this should be withheld! Who would possibly lose out by making this available to us?
Sorry, this sounds a little arrogant to me? The point I was making is that it is massively useful to a lot of people (and for other use cases I haven’t identified). Why are you seemingly writing it off because it’s not relevant to you?!
Great point. So many other reasons I probably haven’t thought of.
The guy writing the receipt app or people working on tools via the Monzo API would kill for having access to all data not just a certain subset Monzo deem us worthy to see.
Look at any other interesting web app. The more data the better always. There are unforeseen and amazing developments by keeping things as open and transparent as possible!
How have you managed with banks so far in your adult life (genuine question)? I didn’t think banks generally offered this data? I might be wrong on that, I have never tried to find it.
With difficulty. It makes things unnecessarily hard on certain occasions.
But the whole point of Monzo is it’s meant to be an empowered improvement on legacy banking!
I may as well ask how did you manage without instant smartphone notifications of transactions, purchase categories and being able to freeze your card from an app “in your adult life”.
Let’s try to work about what’s best for everyone rather than trying to demean each other please?
fyi, other banks do provide this information as a matter of course. It’s not intrusive and it doesn’t clutter things at all.
Perhaps think about your phrasing then. “How have you managed with banks so far in your adult life” What purpose does the emphasis on “adult life” have?
And if you read my post you’ll see I do have this data from other banks. That’s how I do it.
Other I have to call and go through to a special department for them to tell me basic info like this. Or wait for 20 hours on Monzo chat for them to tell me.
Again, with respect, the point is the data are there already! What is the use in keeping them from us?!
Stop seeing things which are not there.