Top up via card

hey James, sorry about the delay coming back to you.

Definitely, we’re planning to store the details so you can top up with a single tap. Regarding your comment about “auto top up” I think what we’re building will suite almost exactly what you want, a notification and a tap to confirm :slight_smile:

4 Likes

Yay - it’s out! Topping up via card works great, and it’s nearly instant. :+1:

2 Likes

Just got the update, topped up via Apple pay. Almost instant. Great jobs guys!

1 Like

It does seem odd though that I can’t top up a specific amount of my choice. Often I like to top up a specific decimal amount to ‘clean up’ the balance in my main bank account to a round number.

5 Likes

When I use Apple Pay, is the transaction on the account the funds are coming out of treated as a cash advance/transfer or as a regular purchase?

I have a TSB account which gives me 5% back on the first £100 of contactless transactions per month. Would be handy to transfer that much on the 1st of each month, claim the 5% back and use Mondo almost exclusively.

1 Like

Hey @billinghamj that’s a very interesting behaviour that we’re fully aware. In fact part of the Mondo team are a bit OCD about it too, the beauty of round up numbers, etc. They’re all hating me for that :slight_smile:

The reason for not having it is twofold, classic design trade-off.

  1. We want a simple progressive input. If we bring a keyboard we need to deal with limits, decimals, errors, an extra zero can be a huge mistake and the keyboard will cover the payment buttons (so you need a dismiss, etc.) There are ways to avoid all this (in fact many of these problems will affect us once we build P2P payments and the user types the amount to transfer) but it’s not worth it at this point.

  2. Once we are a bank you’ll get your paycheck in Mondo to “top up”, and you don’t get to decide how much you earn each month. So we don’t want to incentivise “fake” top ups that don’t correspond at all with real spending needs. Does it make sense?

Okay, so in which case:

  1. does your API support arbitrary amounts?

  2. can I still top up manually by sending you money?

Yes it does. Always within the limits of the terms and conditions :slightly_smiling:

I’m afraid not. Once this feature is fully rolled out this will be the only way for topping up. After that we’ll add “auto top-up” to make it even easier.

Good question. We’re not 100% sure but our gut feeling is it will count as a regular purchase. Would love to know what the answer is when you find out :slightly_smiling:

Amusingly, you can actually use Mondo as the payment card for a top-up. Perhaps some kind of check should happen to prevent this?

The reason for that recursive feature is that we currently don’t store card numbers in our systems so we can’t compare and stop you of using your own card.

The only feasible thing would be to block any Mondo card for being used to top up any other card. We’re considering it but at the same time people may use that as a workaround to send money to friends while we work on P2P payments.

Anyway, well spotted! :slight_smile:

4 Likes

I’d love to see multiples of 5 in the topup amount

1 Like

I hear what you say @jamesallison That’s definitely an edge case that we’ve consciously decided to leave unsupported for now, I’m afraid.

When we started planning top up via card we even discarded increments of £50, the idea was to only accept multiples of £100 to keep the top up screen easy to read and ensure a fast flow.

Then, after a few more weeks of manual top ups, we realised that lots of people were topping up multiples of £50 and we decided to cover those cases too. And even more by giving multiples of £10 just when below £100.

I’m sure we’ll need to adjust things on that screen soon, we’ll keep your request on mind. Thanks! :slight_smile:

I feel that the decision-making process is totally backwards here. If I want to top up a specific amount, why on earth should you stop me? I can do that with my normal bank, so why can’t I do it with Mondo?!

I don’t want my bank to dictate how they think I should use their product - it isn’t up to them. If they’re going to do that, I’d rather go somewhere else.

Sorry for the poor tone - I realize this seems quite entitled. Just feel it needs to be said… not sure if anyone else thinks this way?

2 Likes

Don’t worry about the tone, that’s precisely the idea of this forum, share and challenge what we are doing here and learn from you alphas to make a better product together :slightly_smiling: We really hear and follow what everybody says here to help us drive the product.

So, we take your point guys, I hope we can give you something that suits you better… or by using the app get to convince you that multiples of £50 is actually not such a bad idea :wink:

1 Like

don’t know how simple it would be to have the additional option on the top up screen to top up by a specific amount - presumably you would then need to have a numerical keypad - would this slow the transaction down ? personally I think the top up multiples are simple to use and the options give you enough lee way to get near the amount you want to top up within a tenner - but everybody is different

How about an ‘other’ link to make the field take numberpad input, or an new field or similar?

That way it’s still the clean flow for most, but if you want the weird topup you still can have it?

1 Like

I think you’ve just described product design. For every feature, we always have to trade off simplicity & ease of use versus more complexity but a fuller range of functionality.

Generally speaking, you tend to achieve more intuitive interfaces by restricting functionality. But inevitably there are people who want their use-case to be supported.

We’re actively seeking feedback from you guys to make sure we’re striking the right balance. And we’ll certainly get it wrong sometimes.

7 Likes

Does this count as a cash advance from the underlying card? That can be very expensive.

This is how it shows up on my account:


“DEB” is consistent with what happens when I pay off the balance on my Amex.

Also bear in mind that Mondo does not allow you to top up with a credit card - only debit cards, so I’m pretty sure a cash advance can’t happen.

3 Likes

Even via apple pay ? Does that allow merchants to discriminate the actual card being used ?