Do banking apps help?
BillyBills
Posts: 27 Forumite
Hi guys,
I've recently opened a starling bank account and started to use the app to see my expenses. I was always a classic bank statements by post kind of guy, so it's quite odd to have all my outgoings in real time on my phone. It groups everything too, so I can see where I spend on "shopping" etc. Does this kind of stuff help people or just make them more stressed and on edge about what and where they're spending!
I've recently opened a starling bank account and started to use the app to see my expenses. I was always a classic bank statements by post kind of guy, so it's quite odd to have all my outgoings in real time on my phone. It groups everything too, so I can see where I spend on "shopping" etc. Does this kind of stuff help people or just make them more stressed and on edge about what and where they're spending!
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Comments
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If it makes people stressed about what and where they're spending, then the problem is their spending, not the app.0
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A feature that I would really love, and to my knowledge no current app offers, is an immediate notification for *every* transaction.0
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I won't use it. Do not want my life taken over by technology even more, plus don't trust security of Internet, or the 'tracking' habits of websites.0
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What do you mean by *every*..?Fingerbobs wrote: »A feature that I would really love, and to my knowledge no current app offers, is an immediate notification for *every* transaction.
I've never had anything outgoing or incoming to my Starling account for which I was not notified immediately by the app.Evolution, not revolution0 -
BillyBills wrote: »Hi guys,
I've recently opened a starling bank account and started to use the app to see my expenses. I was always a classic bank statements by post kind of guy, so it's quite odd to have all my outgoings in real time on my phone. It groups everything too, so I can see where I spend on "shopping" etc. Does this kind of stuff help people or just make them more stressed and on edge about what and where they're spending!
"Shopping" is a pretty large and diverse category. How useful is it to know that you spent £XXX on "shopping", which could easily have included, food, toiletries, alcohol, books, furniture, clothes..... It may be more useful if they could break it down into all of these categories, and then you may be able to identify that you are spending way too much on alcohol, or clothes, but as it is, it is just a gimmick, and of no real value in burrowing down into your spending. There are various pieces of software that will do this for you, if you enter the data, including a simple spreadsheet.0 -
Fingerbobs wrote: »A feature that I would really love, and to my knowledge no current app offers, is an immediate notification for *every* transaction.
Starling does this.
ValiantSun - yes, providers are increasingly breaking this down. It's quite easy for card transactions as its based on the merchant code.0 -
ValiantSun - yes, providers are increasingly breaking this down. It's quite easy for card transactions as its based on the merchant code.
Sorry, but they aren't. I could buy all of the items that I listed in a supermarket. The bank would have absolutely no way of knowing how my bill was divided between these many different categories. Furthermore, if you use a credit card (and there are so many good reasons to do so) then all your app will show is that you had a credit card bill for £XXX, not that you spent £X in a supermarket (on a diverse range of goods); £X in a bookshop; £X in a pharmacy.....
The apps just aren't sophisticated enough!
Oh, and it's ValiantSon.0 -
Starling does this.
ValiantSun - yes, providers are increasingly breaking this down. It's quite easy for card transactions as its based on the merchant code.ValiantSon wrote: »Sorry, but they aren't. I could buy all of the items that I listed in a supermarket. The bank would have absolutely no way of knowing how my bill was divided between these many different categories. Furthermore, if you use a credit card (and there are so many good reasons to do so) then all your app will show is that you had a credit card bill for £XXX, not that you spent £X in a supermarket (on a diverse range of goods); £X in a bookshop; £X in a pharmacy......
Agree with ValiantSon, the apps merely state where you bought something, not what it was. So they do not do what they claim to do in differentiating types of spend, except at a very superficial level. If I buy my bread, butter and crumpets at the local petrol station the app will think I bought petrol. That's not very helpful.
Re credit cards though, the Tandem app, with the Tandem Credit Card, does tell you which shop it was. So better than VS suggests. But no better than the basic problem, which is the card doesn't know whether you bought jeans, beer, rice krispies, a DVD, a toaster, condoms, a new telly, or a trolley-full of bananas (or all of the above) from Tesco.0 -
ValiantSon wrote: »Sorry, but they aren't. I could buy all of the items that I listed in a supermarket. The bank would have absolutely no way of knowing how my bill was divided between these many different categories. Furthermore, if you use a credit card (and there are so many good reasons to do so) then all your app will show is that you had a credit card bill for £XXX, not that you spent £X in a supermarket (on a diverse range of goods); £X in a bookshop; £X in a pharmacy.....
The apps just aren't sophisticated enough!
Oh, and it's ValiantSon.
That doesn't seem to be the case. On logging into my Nationwide account last week, for example, I noticed to my alarm that the bank had included, under something called 'MoneyWatch', messages to the effect that 'you have spent more on your food shopping last month than in the previous month' (can't remember the exact wording), and a couple of other messages with regard to my spending. Clicking onto these messages brought up graphs of the breakdowns. I never asked the bank to do this (and never was asked to approve such monitoring), and do not want a bank to pry into my spending habits at all. I can see that some people, who find it difficult to control their spending and regularly get overdrawn, might feel they want to agree to a bank controlling their spending in such a way, but I never get overdrawn and have always been in control of my financial matters.
I asked for the 'facility' to be removed, but of course have no way of knowing whether the bank continues to 'analyse' my spending and whether it is using the information for its own purposes. I find this an alarming invasion of privacy into something that is part of a customer's private life and no business of other parties.0 -
Agree with ValiantSon, the apps merely state where you bought something, not what it was. So they do not do what they claim to do in differentiating types of spend, except at a very superficial level. If I buy my bread, butter and crumpets at the local petrol station the app will think I bought petrol. That's not very helpful.
Re credit cards though, the Tandem app, with the Tandem Credit Card, does tell you which shop it was. So better than VS suggests. But no better than the basic problem, which is the card doesn't know whether you bought jeans, beer, rice krispies, a DVD, a toaster, condoms, a new telly, or a trolley-full of bananas (or all of the above) from Tesco.
I was unaware of Tandem, but as you say, it only delivers the same lack of differentiation that the app-based current accounts provide.
It isn't their fault that they can't differentiate the spending more accurately, but it is their fault that they misrepresent what the apps can actually do.0
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