I’ve seen a few threads regarding this, but no one actually suggesting a solution so I thought I’d share my idea. So we know that virtual cards don’t show their name in Apple Wallet, and even when tapping on a card to show the details it just appears as Monzo Mastercard… not ideal. Trying to rely on remembering what colour is assigned to what pot is very error prone and frustrating.
Now as far as I can tell, Apple Wallet shows an image of the card that is supplied from the Monzo app, which can be whatever design they like. When sending the image over, why not embed the name of the virtual card onto the image? Adding text to an image is programmatically pretty simple so this feels like it’d be a big UX win. Thoughts?
Someone somewhere in the Monzo universe will explain in further detail, but this is limitations with the agreement with Apple, possibly MasterCard too (?), so text isn’t allowed to be applied in this manner.
100% agree it would be convenient though.
So this stops Monzo being able to provide the name on the card to Apple pay.
It’s a shame Apple wallet itself doesn’t allow you to do this IE if you tap the card and at the top/underneath shows your preferred text.
Google does let you add a nickname, but you have to tap on details in the wallet app to see the nickname, unless you’re paying through the Chrome and it’ll show as the name you chosen IE food.
So is it the case that Monzo have to upload predesigned cards to Apple (of which there’s a limited number), and then when a customer picks a colour it just selects that id and shows it in Apple Wallet? Or is it a case of when a customer selects a card in the Monzo app it sends a bitmap image of the card to Apple Wallet (ie unique to that customer)?
If it’s the latter then it should be doable, providing there isn’t actually a restriction on text on the image in place. I was scanning the docs at Apple Developer Documentation and I can’t see any restrictions surrounding putting a category name on the card itself, the restrictions implies it’s just the customer name (which you could easily prevent from happening) and the account number.
@andrew_fishy highlights another thing I spotted… the card name is currently passed as ‘Monzo Mastercard’ rather than the actual Virtual Card name. If Carlo1460’s comment about the restrictions being that tight and ludicrous are true then fair enough, there’s not much that can be done. The documentation I’ve seen implies otherwise and maybe I’m not seeing the full picture, but maybe it’s worth double checking? The restrictions might have been discussed and actually only apply to the card title, and maybe it was never considered embedding the text within the image of the card (which might be allowed). Might be worth double checking anyway.
If the restrictions are there then does Monzo have any channels with Apple where you can voice your feedback and hopefully get them to accomodate it in some fashion? It makes the feature very sub-par at the moment and in Apple’s world, I’m surprised that they’re happy with that!
It’s been discussed here somewhere before and explained why there’s no way to adapt the images for personalisation, only a generic image to be uploaded/attached.
If you search the forums you may find the discussion around it, or someone may drop by with the page/more info around it.
Sure, but just because it isn’t supported now doesn’t mean that it can’t be, but if noone tells Apple / Mastercard they’re not going to action it. Seems strange to just shut the conversation down like that…
It’s nearly a year since the feature launched, and now you’ve got data on the number of people using virtual cards with Apple Pay and Google Wallet. You could go to them with evidence that this is a usecase for XXX people along with projections for the future, and let them know that it’s being voiced that it’s a subpar experience, so would they be open to improving it.
Wow, it’s like you only read the first sentence. It’s still a Monzo experience, even if it’s on Apple’s side, and you have more clout than us to action that change. But yeah, whatever, obv don’t give a sh*t about your customer experiences anymore.
I can’t imagine Apple ever allowing this. They won’t want text like ‘cumface’ or ‘onlyfans’ appearing in the Wallet app, even though people might be able to have that text in their banking app. It would mean that Apple then need to start providing a disallowed words list which they would then need to maintain… in multiple languages.
That was never my expectation. What I did expect was a two way discussion around the prospect of getting it fixed, whereas it’s just been very one way, and surely the point of a community is to engage with customers & investors in order to improve on your product?
I’m a technical person, and I understand the reasons why it can’t be done at present (and yes, I’ve read through that discussion). However, the majority of customers aren’t technical people, and what they’ll see is that they’re paying for Monzo Plus, adding their cards to Apple Pay, but then they have to make a colour based memory selection, which is going to drive a lot of people nuts. They won’t know or care who’s responsible… it’s a payment card that is provided by Monzo, so they’ll see it as a Monzo thing and think the experience is really poor.
… and again, all I’m suggesting is that there is a consideration for a conversation to happen with Apple now that there’s data backing it up. That might have happened, but who would know… Carlo1460 is just shutting it down, so the questions aren’t getting answered. If there’s a potential to improve Monzo’s offering I don’t get why it wouldn’t get considered, even if it’s not directly on Monzo’s product.
Not really - @Carlo1460 is not here as a representative of Monzo. He is using his own time to provide some knowledge to community members. You have made the suggestion as a new post, it would have been noted. A more formal avenue to go down would be to contact Monzo direct.
Another option I see here, rather than a colour is just pre-made selections? e.g Food, Holiday, up to how many you can have (I don’t know the limit on the combonations).
So, you could have pre-made categories, rather than the colours? sure, that limits your choices on what you can label your pots though
