I’ve recently got my new Mondo card and have been using it for the past few weeks, unfortunately I do not have an iPhone (Nexus 6P represent!) therefore I’ve tried to manage by using the app on my iPad.
I don’t carry my iPad with me everywhere and I work pretty long hours in the office so I tend check the app just before bedtime when I get back home which hasn’t really been ideal. I know this is only a temporary issue as the Android app is in the works, but I was wondering if there were any plans to offer website solution for Mondo customers too?
For example I bank with Barclays, I have an Android and an iPad app but also a fully functional mobile banking website so I have all my bases covered in case one of my mobile devices’ battery has run out etc
Instagram started as an app only solution but then developed a website interface with your newsfeed and some key functionality from the app.
This way we could be platform agnostic and provide another avenue to check your finances and/or top up etc What do other people think? Would this be useful?
I would really like to see a web version. Plenty of reasons like…
Device is out of battery, no access to phone so need to login elsewhere
Need to make lots of fiddly transactions or review a lot of data with a bigger screen
Need to export data to somewhere else like a spreadsheet for accounts
Need to print out a statement for some reason
There are plenty of services that just have an app, but Monzo isn’t exactly instagram or tinder. It’s hard to feel comfortable moving around large amounts of money with only an app.
My guess is that Monzo will leave it to 3rd party developers to build web apps that support these bit’s of functionality -
quite a few have been built already -
As for this -
I know where you’re coming from but I have a feeling that mobile first banks will become the norm so safeguards will be developed & after a while this will just feel…normal. It’s also worth mentioning that apps are much more secure than your PC.
Possibly correct on the second one. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with an app, it’s just psychological I suppose.
I wouldn’t want to use a third party service to access my bank account because I can’t trust the middle layer that’s fetching my data. I could self host something, but that would be time consuming to setup and maintain, and it’s not accessible to people who don’t have web dev skills. Even then I’d have to trust the code or spend even more time auditing it to make sure it’s not doing anything sneaky.
I would say if Monzo want mass market acceptance, a web interface for desktop browsers is going to be needed… Sure mobile first, perhaps, but mobile only ?? 5 inch screens and no keyboard for financial controls… Inputting ibans and long form international addressing on a phone ??
Sure… Monzo is currently in beta, isnt a bank, and is focused on nice tools which work on phones… Hey I love those features too… But if you think the mass market is going to drop desktop access, at the same time as swallowing things like no branches, no physical point of contact, I think thats a very big ask.
Currently theres a whole bunch of things I would feel are essential to being a ‘bank’ rather than just a payment mechanism… Monthly statements, start end balances, account access in other ways than only in app… I am of the belief that this is part of a process that will happen as they become a bank. I tend to feel if they dont do this, they wont succeed as a bank. As a payment mechanism, sure.
Although I still don’t agree, you’ve raised some perfectly logical points here & it’s interesting to hear your perspective. Perhaps I’m being too idealistic here & my version of Monzo will be too radical for the 1 billion+ users to accept.
Just to mention a couple of things - Monzo won’t be providing all of the services that you currently expect a bank to provide. Third parties will provide them instead & one of the performance attributes that Tom’s talked about for the marketplace ratings, is how easy their services are to use. Maybe you will still have to fill out a form on your computer in order to complete a mortgage application for a while (does Atom make you?) but clearly it’s in those provider’s interest to become mobile first too.
An advantage of only offering a ‘basic’ current account is that it reduces the number of complex processes that Monzo has to be able to handle in the app.
Secondly, one of the main benefits building a modern bank is that you shouldn’t need to renter information, that’s already in a database somewhere else again, in all of the forms that legacy banks are practically built on. So to take your example, since your IBAN number is matched with you & your bank, why should you have to manually type it when making or receiving a transfer? Again, not having to complete lots of forms reduces the complexity & makes mobile banking a more realistic prospect.
Obviously there’s more to consider than that but hopefully that covers some of users concerns about not having a ‘full’ web banking interface.
There was some research recently, all be it international not UK, that forecast after an initial growth in mobile banking a modest contraction in use of phones with a growth in tablet and other mobile devices so that they eventually overtook them. It maybe with the limitations of screen size they become niched for mainly checking balance and making payments, whereas the larger tablet sized screens immediately open up the possibilities of what you can do more comfortably.
I think it’s too early to call this, given the terrible UI / UX of the legacy banks mobile apps.
Ultimately, when it comes to mobile vs PC / tablets, my assumption is that almost all companies (certainly banks) will eventually move to whichever type of device is most popular & if this guy doesn’t know which that will be, no one does -
It was predominately done in USA rather than UK so that must say something. Also if you compare say Monzo and Monese apps versus Metro bank UK and RBS group surely the experiences of users might have conditioned their responses.
Theres no big public database in the sky for these things… If I want to transfer to an asian account, I need to enter (at least once if stored) the iban… If I need a payment made to my BVI consultancy company… Or if you have to send money to an unnamed / numbered swiss account, the data must be entered.
Banking is not all public and open, as a uk person paying a uk entity may hope or expect… Parts of the world is cobbled together with SWIFT, IBANS, BIC codes, Clearing banks, gateways, etc etc… And Monzo has to feed into all of them, it can say “oh yeah, we cant send that money to X we are not in that database”.
Day to day consumer high street spending in the UK is all well and good… But the transition to being a bank, to operating in the global sphere, is not (IMO) going to be manageable, at least not nicely, with a phone interface. I am pretty confident that Monzo will handle that transition, I can imagine a highly slick Monzo tablet / desktop edition… A place to edit and control creditors on record, to input long form transfer details, to present the data granularly in secondary swipes behind a nice timeline, a timeline you can slice to monthly where the start end balance is shown (giving me the reconcilable monthly statement I crave) and additions deductions all tally up in the period…
I have high hopes for the platform, but personally feel that platform will not be a viable one if a tiny handheld screen is all I have to access it with. If thats the case even as keen as I am, I wont been keeping it beyond dropping a grand in when going overseas to take the freebies (and hence cost them money with little benefit).
liked the tweet so…
