Good bank interface / bad bank interface
B0bbyEwing
Forumite 762 Posts
Beauty here is there's no right or wrong answer. Well actually every answer is right for whoever is posting.
I'm sure many of us have been around the various big name banks as well as some of the not so well known ones. Who's portal did you like & who's did you not?
Can be app based, browser based, both.
For me -
FirstDirect - horrible, prehistoric interface. I don't like it one bit. I've been wanting to leave them for a long time but they keep bringing out decent regular savers, so I stay.
Chase - again, not a fan of their app. With every bank I can go & see what my end balance was say 5 days ago. Can't do that with Chase. Also when setting up payments, I don't see any reference. It's name, sort code, account number & that's it. I like to have a reference.
Royal Bank of Scotland - not quite as bad as FD but not much better. Again, itching to leave but their regular saver isn't bad, so I stay.
I quite like -
Halifax/Lloyds - nice & clean. My only gripe is I have a lot of payees to delete & what a ballache it is. Once you've deleted one, instead of taking you back to the payees page, you have to go round a load of clicks to get back where you were. The payments are decent on the browser but if i remember right, the app is a bit of a pain in that it only gives you sort codes & account numbers, not references. You have to click one to see if you got the right one. No good.
Santander - quite like their setup but I only use it for the direct debits they pay out on.
HSBC - quite like theirs and they get bonus points for offering a live chat, unlike some of the others. I don't want to have to phone for everything.
Nationwide's is nice & clean too but when you're looking through payment history I think they could be better with showing the references. To be picky, my gripe with them is their weird sort code/account number setup which dictates what I have to put in as a reference. I like to put my own reference in.
Who do you like/dislike?
I'm sure many of us have been around the various big name banks as well as some of the not so well known ones. Who's portal did you like & who's did you not?
Can be app based, browser based, both.
For me -
FirstDirect - horrible, prehistoric interface. I don't like it one bit. I've been wanting to leave them for a long time but they keep bringing out decent regular savers, so I stay.
Chase - again, not a fan of their app. With every bank I can go & see what my end balance was say 5 days ago. Can't do that with Chase. Also when setting up payments, I don't see any reference. It's name, sort code, account number & that's it. I like to have a reference.
Royal Bank of Scotland - not quite as bad as FD but not much better. Again, itching to leave but their regular saver isn't bad, so I stay.
I quite like -
Halifax/Lloyds - nice & clean. My only gripe is I have a lot of payees to delete & what a ballache it is. Once you've deleted one, instead of taking you back to the payees page, you have to go round a load of clicks to get back where you were. The payments are decent on the browser but if i remember right, the app is a bit of a pain in that it only gives you sort codes & account numbers, not references. You have to click one to see if you got the right one. No good.
Santander - quite like their setup but I only use it for the direct debits they pay out on.
HSBC - quite like theirs and they get bonus points for offering a live chat, unlike some of the others. I don't want to have to phone for everything.
Nationwide's is nice & clean too but when you're looking through payment history I think they could be better with showing the references. To be picky, my gripe with them is their weird sort code/account number setup which dictates what I have to put in as a reference. I like to put my own reference in.
Who do you like/dislike?
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You've stated you like Lloyds and Nationwide because they look nice whilst mentioning technical issues where they could do better, Santander also suffer the same problem with payees all looking alike. Yet, You you don't like RBS as it's one step up from the prehistoric FD interface despite the fact it doesn't suffer with any of the technical issues you don't like at Lloyds/Halifax/BOS/Nationwide/Santander.
There are many instances when websites have been upgraded to look nice but removing functionality in the process. Personally, as long as it works how I want it to work, I don't care what it looks like.
I hate the Santander web interface, I don't find it at all logical.
Others that I use but not enough to find their shortcomings (i.e. they all do what I need them to do for me personally) are Halifax, Tesco, Coventry, Virgin and Saffron.
I wonder if (unless it's changed since I was last with them) the Post Office's system is universally seen as poop.
I was with them to meet direct debit requirements on other banks. I was very happy the day I left. Their system was horrible in every way, all the way up to their customer service team.
Nationwide is well laid out but again payments aren't useful - once made you get left on a screen and then have to manually click to return to main menu.
Most banks (other than now closed Tesco) don't seem to share payment details across multiple accounts so if you have more than 1 account you have to setup all the payment details more than once.
BOS/Halifax is pretty good, well laid out screen and easy to use
Even worse, payments between different Nationwide accounts, whether your own or someone else's, don't show the payees name in the transaction history. Instead, they show the sort code and account no., so unless you have memorised those details, it's very easy to forget who you've paid, or who you've received money from.
Not sure whether you can do the same in online banking, too, as I only use the app. However, to set up an SO to a new payee, the app says you have to use online banking 🤣......me, I would just create a new payee in the app, and then follow the steps above 🤣