Volunteering to Approve Merchant Data

So, we all know that the Merchant Data that is used throughout the application is crowdsourced by the users of Monzo.

Also, the approval of it is all done by the Cops, who (rightly) don’t have it as a priority when there’s genuine support requests to fulfil.

I know there’s a system already built to allow the acceptance of Merchant Data. :sunglasses:

Unfortunately the speed of approval of merchant data has slowed down :frowning:

My question to Monzo is - is there a possibility of allowing people to volunteer to approve the Merchant Data to help relieve some of this work from the Cops? I’d be more than willing to help do so if it helped the process and improved Monzo as a whole.

Is this something that Monzo would consider? Are the systems are separated enough, and there’s no potential leakage of user data through to the volunteers.

Food for thought maybe - thoughts?

//@BethS & @cookywook

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They’re not separate enough at all right now to be able to do anything like this :frowning:

Were more or less on top of it every day or so.

Maybe the process needs a slight tweak then, maybe letting people know that their suggestion has (or hasn’t) been approved.

At the moment they go into a black hole. :frowning:

Also, does the system do both logos & the merchant name improvement too?

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Maybe employ a member of staff to focus on this task? Any volunteers? Me.

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I think that’s certainly a cool idea, and would be a great way to engage the community in the future.

However, as @BethS said this is currently done via an internal tool we call BizOps which handles everything from calls to FPS that haven’t been credited (for whatever reason). We’d have to build a new portal and then have some kind of privilage system - it’s not a simple task I’m afraid :frowning:

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It does both of those :+1:

I’ve personally given up on the merchant logo suggestions. When I’ve suggested them before, they’ve changed - which is great.

However, in recent weeks, the logos I’ve suggested have either changed or lost their logo picture. Seems like a waste of effort.

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I updated one last night and it was updated within 10 mins, other times it’s been a day or two.

This is what I’m worried about - Crowdsourcing information is only as strong as the whole loop. Ie, if you’re getting disheartened by it, probably others are too. So Monzo’s data could stagnate. :frowning:

@BethS @HughWells thanks for the info about how they’re both connected … maybe it’s just more improvement needed to the system as whole in terms of feedback or something. I’m wary there’s no “transparency” of it really, and that’s what Monzo’s all about. :eyes:

I’ve updated some of them, and they’ve not updated. :man_shrugging:t3:

I think a feed item saying it had been approved or declined would be ideal.

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Or a push notification which then opened the item that had been improved? I think my feed would fill up too quickly if I got a new feed item each time. :sweat_smile:

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Some kind of feedback would definitely be good, as ones that I submitted a few weeks ago haven’t updated, whilst some get updated the same day!

(Admittedly the ones that haven’t updated are ones which are still showing as Paypal rather than the actual merchant, or ones where I’ve tried to submit the Facebook logo instead…)

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I don’t think outsourcing this to volunteers makes sense (aside from technical issues). However, feedback would be hugely useful. Sometimes it feels like hitting a brick wall submitting merchant data.

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We would leave PayPal as PayPal. We’ve recently changed this so that we should be going back to merchant but this doesn’t always backdate well.

I think when improving the logo, I think it should be made clear that other social media accounts such as Facebook & Instagram can also be used by putting the link / handle in.
maybe have a drop down where you say where it’s from.

Collecting info such as website address and phone numbers would be cool for use in the future.

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Ah, okay, I wasn’t sure whether this was the case as this was posted previously:

So just to confirm, it’s only for Paypal transactions going forward that the merchant logo will be shown, and that previous ones probably can’t be changed/updated?

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Anything still shown as PayPal should be reported for review by the team.

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As long as it’s a card purchase. The PayPal direct debit will still show as PayPal :+1:

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Thanks @kieranmch and @BethS! Yes, these have been card payments that are still showing as PayPal even after I’ve reported them.

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Ah, ok. :thinking: @kieranmch, have we passed this as an announcement to Cops and that it has changed? Might be worth reiterating in our updates :+1: