They have no future without an EMV solution and deals with card issuers.
Curve get around this by being a regular EMV card and doing redirection network side. That has weird issues and potential for incompatibilities.
Plastc seem to have the hardware but no software, backend or deals with issuers to make it work. Their charger is also huge and too proprietary for what it otherwise is. The undefined $50/year subscription past 18 months also kind of kills it for me.
My only slight concern is that most supermarkets require the scan/swipe of the loyalty, or it’s associated barcode, on their terminals in order for the items to be logged into the recent history of the loyalty scheme, thereby allowing the the supermarket to offer better deals suited to the shopper.
For instance, because I buy a big bag of Tetley tea bags regularly (major Tetley addict here ), I can be offered up to £1 off with my next purchase of that item. Doesn’t sound a lot, but when all added up with offers against other things I regularly buy, it makes a difference.
How might digital loyalty cards as part of Monzo allow for this?
Don’t know why I hadn’t spotted it on the roadmap before. It seems that Monzo may be psychic or possibly this feature has been requested before and I hadn’t noticed. Although if that’s the case then I’m not sure why Discourse didn’t offer a suggestion of an already existing topic when I was creating this one. This item on the roadmap might cover my suggestion.
They had said a little while that they’ve experienced some minor setbacks, but working to get back on track (or said something to that effect - I can’t find the quote).
I’d actually prefer the launch of the current account sooner, with all the basic features one would expect of rival banks (just done better) and without building on other features in the meantime, then I’d be able to ditch First Direct. The we can get more excited about any revolutionary new features.
I’ll be happy in either case. In differing amounts, I’m excited about all upcoming features.
Other than keeping the API running, I don’t think there’s a huge amount to that Monzo would need to do to make this a reality. Perhaps a nice app-to-app OAUTH2 implementation.
Not really aiming for the big players like Tesco or Cineworld, more the awesome little independent places where the spend to reward ratio is ridiculously generous.
Interesting story from the BBC - shoppers are happy to sign up for loyalty cards & have too many. But offers aren’t personalised enough to incentivise customers to use them…could Monzo reducing the friction of using loyalty cards help solve this?
Britons belong to an average of 3.6 schemes each
Some 55% said that they shopped more at retailers with loyalty schemes
Cashback was the most popular feature of these rewards among consumers
It’s time for merchants to realise that Apple Pay and Android Pay exist and solve most of these problems.
Automatic notification and presentation of loyalty cards and vouchers increases their use with the benefits of me not having a huge wallet.
Given that many merchants are still struggling to reliably accept contactless and very few support CDCVM to take Apple/Android Pay over £30, I have little hope this will actually happen though.
Just over half of those asked in Britain, and 62% globally, said they were comfortable with retailers collecting information about their habits in exchange for discounts.
Although I have seen other users state they wouldn’t want to share that kind of data with their retailer and for this feature to work it may also be required to share with Monzo too. I can see why some users may not want the data shared. One example being a customer of a sex shop ( not me though ).
I have to disagree here, there are certainly purchases made with my Monzo card that I wouldn’t want exposed or used for any kind of targeted advertising.
With Monzo’s high transparency, I can see it possible that even the privacy concerned would be attracted to what Monzo is offering. Other banks barely even ask or hide opt-outs in impossible to find places. It depends on your privacy threat model.
The current Monzo API has webhooks, which means that a loyalty programme such as Scrummy (http://www.scrummyloyalty.com) could ask to be notified of transactions only when it’s a Scrummy merchant to which the customer is enrolled.
The act of enrolling would involve the Scrummy user ticking a box when they shop at a Scrummy merchant, then Monzo and Scrummy create the hook.
Each Monzo customer could have a handful of Scrummy merchants that they are enrolled into. So if you visit a Scrummy sex merchant, then if you’re not enrolled Scrummy will never be notified and you won’t receive your sex shop points.
This approach would mean less polling of Monzo’/ API, much better privacy for the customer and near realtime notification of points issuance.
We don’t have sex shops on Scrummy. Not yet anyway.
The idea here would be for you lovely Monzo genius to get deals with all the above and owning a Monzo card, we automatically get a John Lewis card first time we shop with them without registering etc. Same for Waitrose and the other everyday - honest do you carry your B&Q card? Or Coop one?
Any first payment Monzo ask if we want to join the club - if yes discounts and reductions apply automatically without showing another card. ️:clinking_glasses:et voilà !
Would be great if you could link your points cards, so for instance if you use your Monzo card in Costa Coffee it would recognise this and add the collected points to the account. Saves you having to carry all your points cards around with you.
If you’re into loyalty cards and don’t want to carry them around, you should check out Stocard. This doesn’t address the feature you’re after, but it does solve the problem right now of forgetting or not carrying around loads of random loyalty cards.
Stocard looks very good! I’m still umming and ahhing about it… It looks better than Android Pay’s implementation yet at the same time it’s another app that offers functionality I already have
Do you use Stocard? Does it work quite well for you?
I found that Android Pay struggles with some barcodes… Tesco Clubcard being my biggest issue!