My comparison of banking apps (Monzo, Starling, Lloyds, Natwest and others)

SouthLondonUser

Another mildly infuriating first world problem, which most people will not care about: with dinousar banks it's impossible to get a receipt confirming the exact banking details of your payees. They'll tell you you paid £200 to Mr John Doe, but won't give you a confirmation that you sent the money to sort code x and account y.

 I had to pay a tradesman I remember paying from my Starling account. So I go to my Starling app, search for the transaction, find it, click "payment confirmation pdf" and I get a nice PDF with the banking details of the guy. So I then pay him from the Lloyds app, using the new Lloyds account I have just opened.

The Lloyds app gives you an option to create a receipt only when you make the payment. And the receipt does not even give you the full details - the first half of the account # is blacked out. You want it later? Tough luck. You want the exact banking details of the payee? Tough luck.

The Natwest app is even worse because you cannot create a receipt ever, not even right when you make the payment.

IF the payee is still in your list of saved payees you can find him that way, but it is still not a confirmation of

herebeme

With Chase you 
- can’t see transactions on a map
- it does group transactions by category (and you can change this too)
- you can add notes to transactions

I love the app, the interest and rewards are good, as are the multiple additional accounts you can add to act as pots.
My biggest bugbear is that you can’t rename accounts once you’ve made them, and it also seems like you cannot change goals for each account once you set these (if someone knows how, please share!) 

enthusiasticsaver

I love Starling. It does everything I want it to and more. I don’t have an issue with it not having a credit card. I can recategorise if needed, move money into savings spaces and see instantly any spends. No need to have separate money software to check on spending patterns. 

SouthLondonUser

enthusiasticsaver said:

I love Starling. It does everything I want it to and more. I don’t have an issue with it not having a credit card. I can recategorise if needed, move money into savings spaces and see instantly any spends. No need to have separate money software to check on spending patterns. 

I like Starling, too. A separate budgeting software like MoneyDashboard or MoneyHub comes in handy if you spend from your Sterling account + with a credit card; using a credit card doesn't necessarily mean being a debt addict, you could make use of cashback or other offers and pay the full balance every month, without being charged interest.

Basically in these cases if you have spent £50 at Tesco from your Starling debit card and £40 at Sainsbury from a credit card, the budgeting app will show both and will show you "groceries: £90"

alibean121

I think I have different priorities to the OP in terms of what I want in a banking app.

Chase app is ok but pretty unstable and has much more downtime than any other bank or building society I deal with. It's unacceptable to me not to be able to access funds when I want to and I think it's fundamental. I'm at a point with them now where I wouldn't care if they were paying 10% on savings, I wouldn't move my money back there.

My main feature that irritates me not to have on a banking app is some kind of pull down to refresh balances function. The main time I'm on banking apps is at the start of the month where I'm sending money around to where it needs to be to pay into various regular savers or meet account conditions etc. Lloyds app is generally very good but I find it very annoying that you can't refresh account balances if you make a payment into the account after you first logged in, you need to log out and back in again to be able to make a payment on with those funds.

HSBC have improved their app a lot recently as it used to be chronic. I like their balance after bills feature that uses what it knows about your standing orders and direct debits to guess what your balance will be - saves me using the calculator when working out what I can send to savings for interest.

I have other budgeting systems so don't care about any of the categorisations or other features like that but really value things like it being easy to set up new payees, change recurring payments etc. HSBC lose a lot of points for things like you can't rename a payee after you've created it, you need to delete and add again with a different name. You can't change the date of a standing order - only the amount and again need to delete and add again. Anyone asking me to have a card reader is having a laugh.

Rob5342

Get a Monzo or Starling account, they don't have any of those problems.You can ignore the extra features if you don't need them.

Marchitiello

SouthLondonUser said:

Another mildly infuriating first world problem, which most people will not care about: with dinousar banks it's impossible to get a receipt confirming the exact banking details of your payees. They'll tell you you paid £200 to Mr John Doe, but won't give you a confirmation that you sent the money to sort code x and account y.

 I had to pay a tradesman I remember paying from my Starling account. So I go to my Starling app, search for the transaction, find it, click "payment confirmation pdf" and I get a nice PDF with the banking details of the guy. So I then pay him from the Lloyds app, using the new Lloyds account I have just opened.

The Lloyds app gives you an option to create a receipt only when you make the payment. And the receipt does not even give you the full details - the first half of the account # is blacked out. You want it later? Tough luck. You want the exact banking details of the payee? Tough luck.

The Natwest app is even worse because you cannot create a receipt ever, not even right when you make the payment.

IF the payee is still in your list of saved payees you can find him that way, but it is still not a confirmation of

I use the RBS version but as far as I know is exactly the same as the NatWest branded version (or do they were when I had both NatWest and RBS accounts some years ago) and you can indeed produce a nice receipt in PDF to send over as soon as you complete the payment. As a matter of fact I paid my 9yo daughter on her Saving account and produced a receipt and sent it via Whatsapp to her to see and account for (she is learning about managing money).

the receipt show the name of the sender account holder, last 3 digits of acc. No., full sort code, and then the full payee and payment details 

edited: I have just gone on a random payment I did last week and can also “create PDF” receipt for it, so you can do it at time of payment or any time after that , albeit if done later then at time of payment, it does not show payee account details for some strange reasons 

overspender22

herebeme said:

With Chase you 
- can’t see transactions on a map
- it does group transactions by category (and you can change this too)
- you can add notes to transactions

I love the app, the interest and rewards are good, as are the multiple additional accounts you can add to act as pots.
My biggest bugbear is that you can’t rename accounts once you’ve made them, and it also seems like you cannot change goals for each account once you set these (if someone knows how, please share!) 

You can change the name of the accounts! From the main screen showing all accounts, click on the menu of the account you wish to change the name of. Then click edit account. Then delete the title and rename! You can also choose a new colour. 

anonymousmackem

Just opened a current account with Nationwide and realised that you need a card reader to set up new payees or pay payees that you haven’t paid in a while! Horrendous, who carries a card reader about 24/7? The account will be closed as soon as the switch bonus is paid. This article has spurred me to taking a closer look at what the challenger banks can offer.

flaneurs_lobster

anonymousmackem said:

Just opened a current account with Nationwide and realised that you need a card reader to set up new payees or pay payees that you haven’t paid in a while! Horrendous, who carries a card reader about 24/7? The account will be closed as soon as the switch bonus is paid. This article has spurred me to taking a closer look at what the challenger banks can offer.

Off-topic I know but remember that Nationwide will pay you 5% on £1500 in your current account for a year (if you pay in 1K/month).