So far Monzo seem to be the only bank really lagging behind when it comes to support and features. Took them a stupid long time to support samsung pay. And they have no app for Huawei phones yet for some reason. Revolut, Starling hell even monese has a Huawei app. Why is Monzo so slow at keeping up with the rest of its competition? There has been many times ive had to really think if i should stay with monzo or not since their history of supporting devices and such is not that good.
Different banks prioritise different things based on what they think their demographics want most. Their beliefs may or may not be right, but that’s what it is.
I too prefer Samsung Pay, and I was glad when eventually Monzo supported it. But so many other banks I use don’t support it, so I just ditched it in favour of Google Wallet.
For Huawei, well Monzo will have their own idea as to how limited their userbase using Huawei is, and based on that perhaps they feel it’s not worth spending the money creating and maintaining an app for those phones (maintenance also take a lot of dev time).
On the other hand, Monzo is one of the most technologically advanced and feature-rich banking apps out there, if not the best one in that regard, so while it may be said they have fallen behind on a few niche things, they certainly aren’t lagging behind in things that matter.
End of the day, you need to look at what you want the most out of a bank, and decide if Monzo is right for you. For example, if Samsung Pay is paramount, or you can’t live without a Huawei app (understandable if you have a Huawei phone), then obviously the best solution for you would be to switch to a bank that does have these features.
Well they are good phones and a lot of people don’t care about not having Google Play Services. A not-insignificant number actively avoid them, e.g. using GrapheneOS with F-Droid, Accrescent or whatever other app source, and while I support that attitude, I wouldn’t expect, let alone demand, Monzo to make an app for all those platforms.
If you manually install Google Play App store / Google Play Services on a phone which doesn’t have it pre-installed, will Monzo (and banking apps in general) work normally?
Or does Google Play App store need to be pre-installed by the OEM for banking apps to work normally?
You can’t necessarily install Google play if the phone isn’t Google certified. I think Huawei is subject to US sanctions so Google probably can’t certify it.
Because people who have had Huawei phones before the US ban they know how incredible they are, from cameras to insane battery life and performance. None of that has changed and unless you cannot live without say google wallet or assistant then thankfully almost all mainstream apps are now on huawei. Huawei themselves have even started offering more devices in the UK after they really dialed it back after the ban. Seems there is more interest in their phones again now. I obviously will say that is partly down to other brands really not delivering good value for your money. Looking at samsung there… the smaller chinese brands seem to be getting more and more popular like Oppo and Xiaomi. And huawei had a prestigious history for quality in the past.
Removing google play services in an app isn’t something you can do by just flicking a switch. For many apps it’d be a rewrite from scratch - at the least you’d have to duplicate the functionality you get from it, which is all developer time for something which is at best a small minority of users.
With so many other banks available, this is good for consumers! There is always a choice, but thinking there is a “perfect” bank out there you will sorely be disappointed. At 56 I must have tried them all and have been let down, So when Monzo started I took the plunge and still here years later.
I think Monzo is heading in the right direction, but not for others? And that’s fine. It’s easy to say why this?, why not? About any service.
I’ve never done it myself but based on articles such as the one I’ve linked below I’ve been under the impression that it is possible to manually install Google Play Store (and other Google services) on Android devices that don’t come with them pre-installed. I assume such devices won’t be Google certified, so I’m a bit confused by the claim that they can’t be manually installed on such devices.
The company I work for (FTSE100) recently dropped our support for Android apps outside of the Play Store. Previously, we listed on both Huawei and Amazon. I was involved in the decision to drop support.
Our reasoning was similar to that provided by some others here. Huawei market share in the UK is around 4% and dropping pretty heavily. The lack of Google Play Services and several other open Android SDKs would essentially require a full rework of our app. Not just that, but then either creating two versions we had to maintain, or including duplicates for several SDKs for less than 4% of our users. That’s a massive maintenance overhead and increases the size of the app for every single user. It’s simply not a good business decision to support it (even with Huawei repeatedly trying to bribe us to do so…).
As for Samsung Pay, I don’t personally know anyone that uses it. Myself and all my friends with Samsung devices use Google Pay which is fully compatible with Samsung devices. The main advantage of Samsung Pay was MST, which is irrelevant in the UK. Plus the usage figures of Samsung Pay in the UK are miniscule.
Both of these things simply aren’t high priority focuses for a company with limited resources and so much to do. Even when discussed in these forums, it’s apparent that there isn’t enough demand to warrant the work required to facilitate these things.
Yeah that payments platform I’m involved with does a ton of user research (both our own and with services who use us) and nothing is coming through about Samsung Pay, it’s not a thing in users’ eyes.
You can download and install it but if the device isn’t Google certified then it won’t work. It used to but from a few years back Google play checks so when I tried it on a rather nice Chinese phablet a year or two back it just wouldn’t work. That’s why you now see on Amazon listings that tablets and phones are Google certified. Not all of these come with it preinstalled but you can install it and it will work on the Google certified ones.
I’ve never owned a Samsung, so maybe I was not looking out for it hawkishly, but that must have been rather low key as I saw no announcement post (preparing to be bombarded!)
Other than being from Samsung, does it differ much from Google Pay/Wallet?
Edit: Yeah, really low key:
Pretty much discerned from a Reddit advert rather than any announcement. Lolz
announcement. Lolz
but for another lifetime to discuss