Hi Guys
I’m just wondering why some times the merchants details ie the location or shop name is incorrect, when monzo gets a charge are you not given details on who to pay ie don’t you guys have access to merchant details, and if not why not.
I don’t mind the odd store name or location being incorrect but it’s worrying that you don’t have access to the official merchant database.
I’m not sure of the availability of the feature on Android (if that’s the platform you’re using), but on iOS is it’s possible to submit a recommendation to improve the merchant data.
Tap on the problematic transaction
Then tap “Something Wrong? Tell Us”
And choose from the available options is the popup menu.
What official merchant database exactly?
What Monzo get is a bunch of data that is up to the merchant to set accurately. Often times, terminals move around or get configured with the payment provider incorrectly (everything registered to head office, company names rather than expected brand names used, terminal configuration shared between brands of the same company, etc).
This data also does not always include clean human readable names or logos. For this, Monzo have their own merchant data enrichment service that takes incoming transactions and tries to match them against the database that ties in to various mapping and data sources (though much of it is not used in the app right now, see the API for more).
This merchant enrichment system allows Monzo to know that “DOMINOS PIZZA GROUP MILTON KEYNES GBR” should be displayed as “Domino’s Pizza” with the logo pulled from Twitter or a similar source. That “Connecting to the iTunes Store. ITUNES.COM LUX” should be dispalyed as just “iTunes” with the logo and so on.
Even if Monzo has no entry for the merchant, the system will attempt to clean up the names by correcting capitalisation and removing parts such as “PAYPAL *” at the beginning of the raw name provided to them.
On iOS, it is currently possible to submit corrections or changes to these and improve the merchant database by tapping a button at the bottom of the transaction. This feature is not yet available on Android sadly.
Well said Richard. I am unaware of any and the issues we have with merchant info are down to the merchants and/or the firms they rent POS terminals from. I regularly have purchases in Witham come up as being made in Chelmsford but this is not Monzo’s fault but the shop probably took a spare terminal from their main shop in the other town.
I have had merchant data with a business registered address in London being used for a bar in Leicestershire - I know the owners business address is in London, are his POS terminals registered to his business address in London - presume so ? not the actual location of the bar - I reported this to Monzo and they have updated the pub location to the actual location of the bar.
A question someone at Monzo can (hopefully) answer for me regarding this.
As an Android user I’m currently building a short list of things to report when this feature becomes available to us. If there are a few others like me Monzo are going to be hit with a large number of these corrections at once.
Wouldn’t it be best if they were reported via some other official channel for now?
Yes, this is how Monzo’s asked Android users to report any incorrect details for now -
You can report it via the in app support.
I tried that once, I was advised “The feature will be available soon, and then you’ll be able to submit this sort of information and your feed will look beautiful!”
Sounds like there was some confusion there about whether you were requesting the feature or an update to a merchant’s record. Either way, Sarah’s advice is more recent but let us know if you still have any issues.
Nah. I started the chat at the time to inform them of an incorrect merchant location. I never even knew about the reporting feature until they tried to tell me how to get to it.
Also, I’m missing something here. Who’s Sarah?
Sarah’s the Monzo employee who I quoted in this post
Ah. I follow now. Thanks.
