You’ve answered your own question 
Hate hate hate card readers.
Did I mention I hate them?
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No, I haven’t Alex. You’ve conveniently mixed up two different points that I was making.
- Monzo and Starling have not implemented payees as well as other banks (stand on the shoulders of giants; do it better)
- An explanation of the NatWest £250 limit (I’m not defending it, I’m just explaining it. I don’t like card readers either)
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For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not trying to make out an argument that Monzo (or any other bank) was somehow robbed of the title Best App. I am trying to make the case that awarding a bank Best App purely on how many people click a link in favour of their lifestyle choice, their experience, their bias is ridiculous.
But well done Starling, who are no doubt celebrating their ‘triumph’.
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We all know that Monzo will improve on this feature so I don’t think there’s much to discuss here. It’s not a sign of Monzo’s inability to do anything, it just shows that this stuff is hard & takes time to fully build out.
& the two points are linked, they’re reinventing this stuff because on the whole, the incumbents do a terrible job at it. You can look at a feature in the app & say that it works fine but the bit that needs changing is generally how that’s integrated into the app’s design & how it works with other features.
It’s a sign of Monzo’s model (MVP then iterate).
It means that features are sometimes released which are not quite ready. It can be a source of frustration for some. The model requires (and assumes) that users have the patience to wait until the rough edges are knocked off the new features. So it’s both a strength and a weakness.
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I don’t disagree with that at all. I don’t read too much into the results.
C’mon Alex. This community is for people to discuss aspects of Monzo and FinTech which is what we are doing. Different people are having a conversation.
There’s a topic somewhere about conversations being closed down if not in agreement with Monzo. Your comment smacks of exactly this.
In my earlier posts, I recognised that there’s progress to be made with Monzo and Starling.
I appreciate that you’re heavily emotionally invested in Monzo. I’m trying to take an objective view that offers constructive comment.
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There’s a way to implement this “card reader” thing (technically called EMV CAP) on the phone through its NFC chip; easy on Android, harder but not impossible on iOS either, you just need custom card firmware.
If only the monkeys making the apps would actually bother to innovate. 
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I wasn’t trying to shut any discussion down, I was just pointing out that it might not be a good use of your time. If you think that this is significant & is worth discussing then please do
I think using the card as an additional security factor could make a lot of sense as it would be a relatively friction-free way to provide an additional authentication piece (not a factor though, as it would be a possession factor which a thief already has if they have your phone) to strengthen the possession factor for high value payments and certain actions.
Say, Faster Payments transfers to new payees would require you to tap your card in addition to entering your PIN. It would add just a second to perform offline data authentication and give real security benefits if someone didn’t lock their phone and had their PIN saved in a note (people do the craziest things).
Of course it would have to be Android-only.
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You’re mistaken. I made a particular comment on the Payees functionality. I raised this as an issue with Starling back in August. They took ages to implement an inferior solution. Monzo appears to have largely copied the inferior solution for Payees.
I do not disagree that it’s not easy to build. I couldn’t build it! Respect to Monzo who are making efforts with this.
As a customer, I know which system is easier to use, and it’s not the challenger banks. I hope (and think) that, one day, they’ll surpass the better implementations of NatWest/RBS and First Direct. At the moment, they’re not there.
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That post was mainly for an earlier participant.
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As you keep doing, you’ve taken my comment out of context there.
I’ve already acknowledged that the incumbent’s implemention of that functionality might work well. Monzo’s & Starling’s might not work as well. (I say might because I haven’t compared them myself).
But the reason why they’re ‘reinventing the wheel’ is because the overall UX for the legacy bank’s apps is horrible.
Alex, that’s been my point. The legacy banks are currently doing it better, the overall UX is not horrible with all legacy banks.
I’d be grateful if you stopped attempting to derail my feedback to other contributors.
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Can you point me to this on RBS app I can’t see it. I can see a delete payee but not add. Am I missing it? Ta
Edit. Think I’ve confused payment with payee. Stand down me 
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This has been tough going, chaps. There’s almost a case for exchanges like this going off-line. I say “almost”, because someone’ll likely come back and remind me that this is what forums are about…
But still. 
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What do you mean?
It has?
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Only for me