Sidekick Money Ltd - Safe to use?

KevinG

I did try to open an account with them and approval was supposed to take one business day but ten days later it's still not been approved, so I am going to close the account I haven't managed to open yet!

KevinG

KevinG said:

I did try to open an account with them and approval was supposed to take one business day but ten days later it's still not been approved, so I am going to close the account I haven't managed to open yet!

Well, so much for closing the account, that didn't work and they've now approved my application so I've opened it! Still a good rate so I might as well stick with it.

freeguy1984uk

I see this Sidekick account is still high up on the best accounts lists on here and moneyfacts. 

Has anyone given them a go? 

Some Truspilot reviews have appeared, and all are bad. 

I am aware that people only tend to leave reviews when they aren't happy.

KevinG

freeguy1984uk said:

I see this Sidekick account is still high up on the best accounts lists on here and moneyfacts. 

Has anyone given them a go? 

I have opened an account and once I got past the 12 days it took to approve my application it has been fine. It's a bit odd, you have to move money to a wallet first and then to the savings account, and monthly bonus interest is credited to the wallet, but the main interest is added to the account daily, which is a bit weird, and there is no record of it other than the balance increasing. I haven't yet put £1,000 into their investment product to get the second additional bonus interest rate (taking it to 5.45%). I'll have to have a look at Trustpilot now!

Edit: Yes I remember now, my first small deposit was held for a couple of hours while they did some checks but they said that subsequent deposits would be instant, however Trustpilot suggests there might be additional checks done with large deposits, which I could certainly do without. One review says "Cannot use joint bank account as linked account. Therefore of no use unless you have a sole account." I linked a joint account with no problems.

Bigwheels1111

KevinG said:

freeguy1984uk said:

I see this Sidekick account is still high up on the best accounts lists on here and moneyfacts. 

Has anyone given them a go? 

I have opened an account and once I got past the 12 days it took to approve my application it has been fine. It's a bit odd, you have to move money to a wallet first and then to the savings account, and monthly bonus interest is credited to the wallet, but the main interest is added to the account daily, which is a bit weird, and there is no record of it other than the balance increasing. I haven't yet put £1,000 into their investment product to get the second additional bonus interest rate (taking it to 5.45%). I'll have to have a look at Trustpilot now!

Edit: Yes I remember now, my first small deposit was held for a couple of hours while they did some checks but they said that subsequent deposits would be instant, however Trustpilot suggests there might be additional checks done with large deposits, which I could certainly do without. One review says "Cannot use joint bank account as linked account. Therefore of no use unless you have a sole account." I linked a joint account with no problems.

I now have an account but could not work out how the fund it.

So put the cash in my Trading212 ISA.

They don't help us much.

KevinG

Well that was stressful, the latest £20,000 took 24 hours and a number of exchanges with customer service before it arrived, I don't think I'll be putting any more in. It seems to have disappeared from MSE's list as well. 

niftyprose

I may risk coming across as naive here (naive? moi?) but would like to mention that the Sidekick app runs really badly on my phone -- crashed on first load, extremely slow startups, can't access the phone biometrics. Bad apps speak of under-resourcing. Tends to support the -ve comments on this thread. 

KevinG

niftyprose said:

I may risk coming across as naive here (naive? moi?) but would like to mention that the Sidekick app runs really badly on my phone -- crashed on first load, extremely slow startups, can't access the phone biometrics. Bad apps speak of under-resourcing. Tends to support the -ve comments on this thread. 

The app is fine for me and I don't have any of those problems. 

masonic

niftyprose said:

I may risk coming across as naive here (naive? moi?) but would like to mention that the Sidekick app runs really badly on my phone -- crashed on first load, extremely slow startups, can't access the phone biometrics. Bad apps speak of under-resourcing. Tends to support the -ve comments on this thread. 

It's not unusual for newly developed apps to be designed for the latest phones and perform badly on less powerful devices. The same was remarked of the Chase app in its early incarnations.

poseidon1

https://sifted.eu/articles/sidekick-seed-round-news

 Interesting background article on the business.

Clearly they are not a bank and the level of inward investment from seed investors ( so far) does not indicate a likelihood of that being a viable ambition despite their marketing blurb making prominent reference to private bank services. Personally given their very small size and unimpressive balance sheet, they would not inspire me into entering a medium term financial relationship.