Ah, I see! Thank you - the impression I’d gleaned from comments here and your website that it was all automatic, like I just go shopping as normal and like witchcraft I’ve accrued some cashback balance just by virtue of having installed and configured Tails.
But fine, open an app and click ‘claim - claim - claim’ every so often is easy enough. Thanks for clearing that up.
exactly! 
You don’t need to claim at all, all the offers you see in the app are active. You just need to use your Monzo card in the store to redeem.
The retailers and Tail presumably speak and agree.
Anyone with Monzo spending on their card will get, say, 10% cashback.
You just… spend in store. Each week the cashback is added to your Monzo account.
Many legacy banks do this, as well as American Express, except you need to “Opt in” or load these offers onto your card. With Tail, you don’t. Just have the app and link it to your Monzo account and you need never do anything again.
I’m not sure how to explain it any simpler! 
This seems very cool - forgive me if i’ve not read properly but is this available on Monzo now?
Bah, I’m confused again.
You’ve explained very simply how it’s used - what I’m not understanding is how it actually works.
Let’s say I walk into a shop, and pay with Monzo. Tails is then either polling for expenditure, or has registered a webhook (which isn’t important - I just haven’t checked what the API looks like for a while) - and if the transaction was with one of Tails’ partners, it pays whatever x% cashback into my Monzo out of an agreed balance with the partner?
If that’s right - I get it - but I still think this could be made much clearer on your website. It makes it sound like magic, which is probably fine for some users (I’m thinking of non-technical relatives) but for me it was lacking.
I’m slightly surprised retailers are willing to partner up for cashback where no user interaction is required though. It’s not incentivising me to spend there if I just set it, forget it, and occasionally get ‘free money’.
Any spare spaces going 
It incentivises me - I open the app, see the places near where I work and I choose them over others. Plus there is a chance I might go somewhere and just randomly get cashback in which case hooray I’m happy.
I’m not technical so the backend stuff remains a mystery to me, but I don’t think it’s particularly unclear on the website. Feels like this isn’t an issue for most people. I don’t know why a company would go into much detail about how the cashback is calculated and/or paid - it’s a product aimed at a mass market…
Currently the extent of the description is:
I think if you mention an ‘API’ at all, you’re immediately pitching your description at more technically inclined users, if not developers.
I would suggest splitting the description into general-audience landing page like:
and a more detailed ‘about’ page:
I mean I guess you’re not wrong, but I think if you’re at the point of caring about this, it’s fairly obvious what “Using the Monzo API” means so it’s almost pointless having the additional text.
But hey it doesn’t hurt to have it if it helps so I’m sure they will look at it 
Hey Leonard, we are currently only available to Starling Bank customers, however there is a waiting list for Monzo users on our website: https://tail.at/
Hey Oliver,
haha thats the idea! Most people are not interested in the technical details, we wanted to show our offers and explain the concept as simply as possible.
That said we are going to be making some changes to our site soon, we will certainly link in an FAQ with these additional details.
sorry, I had to quote these comments, they make me feel like a magician!
I asked this of the flux guys but it’s relevant to you too - do you get access to all of the spend data or is it only the data connected to the merchants you are partnered with?
Hey Dave, currently we get access to all spending data, with this additional information we plan constructing methods to better recommend offers. The idea here is to make sure that every time you open the app you are shown immediately the most relevant offers for you.
I don’t think I want to give away that much info!
Assuming that you’re willing to share some information, in order to use the integration, how much info would you be happy to share?
I’d much rather they poll for merchants they already have a relationship with, then tell me about them or reward me for the transactions I’ve made.
No way am I giving up my entire spending history - massive privacy leak.
Yeah, API isn’t smart enough to allow it yet, I think. I totally agree with you, I wouldn’t share all of my spending data this way for some rewards.
I didn’t sign up for Tail, but I hope it’s very clear&transparent how they present this information to users.
Yeah but what’s to stop them just querying merchants they don’t really have a relationship with if they wanted your data? You’d need to have merchant by merchant authorisation.
