Almost nothing is “vital” by that definition. But they are useful on a regular basis and either save lots of time/effort or drastically improve the result.
Again, nothing fintechs are introducing is “vital” by that metric but many things Monzo have already introduced are less “useful” than this. And the point is when you’re new to using a tool it’s more difficult to use it efficiently or judge how useful you will find it going forward.
My position has been clear all along: we should have access to all the data. Even if I don’t personally use every field, others might and there’s nothing lost by having data I can simply ignore if I want. There is something lost by not having data that’s already there.
Okay but you’re talking to people here who don’t find it useful on a regular basis, in some part because they are totally unaware of it. So stating your case as such already puts you on the back foot when trying to introduce the idea to them.
Perhaps, but others will feel that they will lose out on other features if the energy is spent on getting what you want in the app instead.
Try educating people here more on your thought process, rather than making blanket statements and you might get a far more valuable discussion going.
All transactions on my statements have the retailers name and very often their location town or city.
With this information alone, I can tell what every transaction on any of my statements is for.
I’m not trying to be argumentative, I am truly curious
That’s precisely my point! I currently have several transactions which DON’T have the retailers name on. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had to google a transaction biller to try and work out what it actually is. Or the amount of times that’s failed and I’ve needed the MCC too to get a better idea.
Am looking at my statement now and just in the last month there are things like “Percutias” which has nothing in common with the retailer. Or things like just “lbk” or “Bfcb” and “Spx”, “Ppwdl4vk”, “Bc Ltd.”.
I don’t know about you but I can’t work out what any of these are without as many metadata fields as possible!
Yes. There are many data points Monzo have that they don’t share. All extra information helps my sleuthing when I can’t work out what a transaction was. Things that I mentioned previously like type of transaction, exact time, and maybe others I’m not aware of.
The other angle is that merchants don’t always use the obvious MCC and you need to account for this as well.
There’s a whole range of hacky workarounds that would go some way toward helping. However I’m not perfect and don’t/can’t always sort every transaction as it happens and while it’s still fresh in my memory. Sometimes that’s simply not possible with several dozen per day. Sometimes, as I have already said over and over, I don’t have data access for several days.
The simple facts of the matter are that this incredibly simple and minor change that, if implemented, won’t negatively affect anyone else’s use of Monzo yet will be very useful for several people. It’s not about people changing their behaviour to mean that beneficial features are less useful, it’s about empowering users and providing them with with all the information they produce.
Can we just assume at face value that this is a real issue (because people have told you it’s an issue) rather than trying to “solve” a problem that hasn’t been posed. Let’s debate the merits of this idea rather than repeatedly trying to tell people that they must use their bank in a different way.
