Starling and Monzo etc

SlovakianGuy

Bloody hell... Nationwide does not even show payment references!
I also have Monzo and Starling and last time I sent 100 pounds from each to my Nationwide account. When I logged into the Nationwide account, it showed me 100 pounds received as "Bank credit + my name" and the Description was again "Bank credit + my name". One line above was another 100 pounds payment with exactly the same info. So I couldn't even say which one was from Monzo and which one from Starling. That's really reeeeally bad! Why in the world would you hide payment reference from client? There is a plenty of room for additional informations, yet Nationwide leaves it empty. Unbelievable...

hoc

SlovakianGuy wrote: »

Bloody hell... Nationwide does not even show payment references!
I also have Monzo and Starling and last time I sent 100 pounds from each to my Nationwide account. When I logged into the Nationwide account, it showed me 100 pounds received as "Bank credit + my name" and the Description was again "Bank credit + my name". One line above was another 100 pounds payment with exactly the same info. So I couldn't even say which one was from Monzo and which one from Starling. That's really reeeeally bad! Why in the world would you hide payment reference from client? There is a plenty of room for additional informations, yet Nationwide leaves it empty. Unbelievable...

I've never understood why UK accounts show such little information, sometimes virtually nothing, on transfers. Some banks show more detail on paper statements for international payments. Even the most dinosaur of European and American banks show these details on online banking.



For this and other it may just be the frontend, presumption that it isn't valued by UK banking customers. When these types of discussions come up I always give the example of First Direct. Their website looks like something from the early nineties but their backend is HSBC which is the most advanced/robust among the big banks.

Anthorn

Murmansk wrote: »

Are the legacy banks going to up their game and bolt on some extra features or are they dependent on a teetering tower of ancient software built on layers of older software that nobody can amend!?

There is a lot to be said for the "legacy" banks. The problem with the newer Fintech banks is that their systems are sometimes the product of a third party which itself has a legacy system. Starling Bank in particular which is the only one of the two which I have personal experience of appears to have recurring problems with declines of its debit card. On Friday last I attempted to sign up online for a mobile SIM only contract using my Starling debit card as the first payment and it was declined twice. So I had to resort to my Lloyds Bank debit card which worked at the first attempt. Right now I have moved funds from my Starling Bank current account to my Lloyds Bank current account for future spending.

So even though I'm referring to a single occurrence we might conclude that the legacy bank is more reliable than the newer Fintech bank.

Lastly I know the major selling point of the newer Fintech banks is new systems "built from the ground up" which are said to be more reliable than the legacy systems of the older banks. But in my own personal experience in some cases that's not true.

System

Interestingly it looks like Starling is going to help RBS create a digital bank

https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/32581/starling-to-help-rbs-develop-digital-bank

EarthBoy

SlovakianGuy wrote: »

Bloody hell... Nationwide does not even show payment references!

Even worse, if the payment comes from another Nationwide account it doesn't even show their name, -all you get is the sort code and account number and you're left to try and puzzle out who the money's come from. It's the same on the sender's statement, it just shows that you've paid money to 070436 12345678 etc, which could be anybody unless you memorise all your friends' account numbers.

I have a couple of friends with Nationwide accounts and we have to transfer money between each other on occasion. It's very frustrating trying to sort out who's paid you.

I've complained to Nationwide about this, last year and again this year, and even though they acknowledged that "we have had quite a few members mention this before as something they would like to change" they don't seem interested in improving the system.

SlovakianGuy

EarthBoy wrote: »

Even worse, if the payment comes from another Nationwide account it doesn't even show their name, -all you get is the sort code and account number ...

OMG, indeed! I just checked mine. That's pretty lame.

Monzo shows you name, account number, reference, date and even time of the payment! You can also send money back to the account that you've received money from. Compared to Nationwide, it looks like from a different century. The only big downside is that they are app-only, no classic website for online banking, which means I can't consider Monzo a full-blown bank account (same with Starling). I know, this is just my personal preference, but I really miss it. I like to see everything on my large 17-inch laptop screen and use normal keyboard +mouse, not tiny phone screen with very imprecise controls (finger).

I still like Nationwide online banking though. It definitely has more options and settings than, say, my TSB online banking, except that TSB shows references and Nationwide doesn't. But with Nationwide I can at least change my address online, unlike with TSB in which case I need to visit their branch.

Btw, I've complained to Nationwide as well, at least via their Facebook website. I asked them if they could pass it on to developers team. They said yes, of course. But who knows if they'll really do it.

NewToTheUkAgain

The new app based / digital banks are great, but the support is much worse than the high st banks when something goes wrong, as my partner recently experienced with Starling.

ozaz

Murmansk wrote: »

Are the legacy banks going to up their game and bolt on some extra features or are they dependent on a teetering tower of ancient software built on layers of older software that nobody can amend!?

According to Monzo, most traditional banks don't retain the real-time authentication data within their old IT systems that would be needed for instant updating of your account
https://monzo.com/blog/2015/12/02/3-second-sandwich/

Anthorn wrote: »

There is a lot to be said for the "legacy" banks. The problem with the newer Fintech banks is that their systems are sometimes the product of a third party which itself has a legacy system. Starling Bank in particular which is the only one of the two which I have personal experience of appears to have recurring problems with declines of its debit card.

Monzo used to be the same but now do payment processing in-house
https://www.bankingtech.com/2018/07/starling-and-revolut-suffer-weekend-outages/

System

I remember the old TSB, pre Lloyds, making a thing of their 'real-time banking'. My memory is a bit hazy, but I think it took the other banks some time to add transactions to your account.

glider3560

The "legacy" banks do already have this sort of technology in place for Apple Pay and Google Pay transactions. The notifications you get after using this doesn't come from the phone's interaction with the card terminal. The information comes from the authorisation sent from the terminal to your bank.


I could imagine they could easily extend this to non-phone transactions, but it would rely on every transaction being performed online (which it isn't for some cards at the moment).