Slow User Verification for Payments - an area Monzo can improve on High St banks

Feedback & Ideas
1

I just tried to make a large payment on my debit card, it was blocked, which is fair enough I guess (though annoyingly it started to load the 3D secure thing, and then just gave up on it).

Then however I got a text, “was this you? Reply yes or no”. I have a SIM card but no phone plan or credit usually, I just WiFi. But there was no way for me to confirm that the payment wasn’t fraudulent in online banking or in their app (!) - so I spent £10 on a top-up just so I could try to get traction on my original payment, madness already, but I can just chalk that up to my strange phone situation.

After replying “Yes”, and noting that the intended recipient had already quit the session and declared it a non-payment, I figured I could try again. Same thing happened.

Only after the second fraud-blocked payment did I get the reply:

Thanks for confirming the transaction was made by you. If it was “declined” you"ll need to wait 10 minutes before trying again. Thanks for using our Fraud service.

Fantastic. £10 and (>)10min just to make a payment.

This is part-rant, part-hope that Monzo can and will handle this better, but tagged “feature ideas” because I’m sure the community has different ideas on how they’d like to see this implemented.

First and simplest (from my perspective) that comes to mind is that the ‘verified by Visa’ equivalent pops up a code, and asks for it to be entered in the app to complete.

2

The 10 minute wait I believe is just there to try and delay you as the card block/unblock messages do not travel instantly through complex legacy banking systems.

I’m hoping that Monzo’s instant card freeze/unfreeze lays the foundation to make this instant and I look forward to seeing what they can do around these kinds of experiences in the app by showing the same rich merchant data they do for every transaction already in addition to building an excellent 3D-Secure flow.

1 Like
3

Yep. Similar complaints on Fidor forum about their text confirmations.

Personally I would prefer Monzo to use Verified by Visa

4

I don’t doubt it, but that’s what I hope Monzo can fix! :slight_smile:

5

I’ve used Verified by Visa in the past with this debit card; as I say it popped up for this transaction, span a loading spinner, and then unceremoniously said transaction had failed without even asking me to verify anything.

I lay part of the blame with the company I was paying to be honest, this must happen to people all the time - transactions will typically be £1-100k I’d have thought, and yet they only accept debit cards and DD.

Still, that was annoyance that my bank just exasperated by making it painful to deal with.

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