Monzo
The coral card that makes you feel part of a club! More than 8 million people bank with Monzo around the world. Focused on solving problems, rather than selling financial products, Monzo is the digital bank helping everyone to manage their money better.
Personal project
🤑
Platform
📱 App
Quick links:
Objective Strategy
The Idea Hmm..
Process Research & UX
Designs UI
Tests & Findings Data
Objective Strategy
I love money coming in and the sound of it. Thanks to Monzo, I’ve become addicted to the little sound of the cash register and haptic feedback when money leaves my account. It makes me feel like I’m keeping track.
I use my Monzo account everyday and less traditionally than my high street banks, but I’ve repeatedly experienced a pain point.
📲 Online: It’s frustrating when you go to make a purchase using Apple Pay but you can’t remember how much money you have in your main account, if any. Still, you hope for the best (cos you know you’ve got those coins somewhere) and hit “Pay” anyway.
🛍 In store: It’s the embarrassing moment when oops! Your card declines and the cashier couldn’t have been louder about it.
In both cases, you navigate to your Monzo app to check the inevitable: you’ve been so organised, you’ve tucked all your money away in those beautiful little pots. Time to move things around - quickly. Online, your items are unreserved. In store, everyone in the queue hates you (at least that’s how it feels).
You pick the pot you mind pulling from the least, and send an amount back into your main account. You make the purchase, which in person is accompanied by a sheepish ‘I told you so’ face 😏.
This happens to me often and I wondered if anyone else felt the same, so I asked…
Process Research & UX
I sent a Typeform survey to 20 of my friends and family, here are the results:
I found the survey results super interesting. I pulled out a few highlights:
40% of people said they were certain before making a purchase they had sufficient funds with 55% saying they were certain sometimes.
On the contrary, 100% of people said they’ve experienced a payment decline. (Now of course, we must take into consideration bank and connectivity issues - but let’s make an educated guess that it occurs very sparingly.)
The sentiment of this decline was mainly negative, with answers like “Annoyed”, “Frustrated”, “Broke”, “Silly, I didn’t check I had enough money in that account”.
18 out of 20 people said they have a Monzo account with 72% using ‘pots’.
93% of those pot lovers keep all of their money in pots vs their main account.
After being asked how a decline in payment made them feel, 75% of people said they thought it would happen again. And when asked why, they answered…
“🗣 Because I’m all always in a rush and never check my balances.”
“🗣 You have to log in and see how much £ is in your main account and then transfer money from one of your pots to the main account.”
“🗣 Because Monzo isn’t my main account and I can just transfer.”
“🗣 I probably won’t change my habits.”
The Idea …
It’s obvious that the ability to pay directly from a Monzo pot is pretty sought after. However, the implementation of that may prove difficult. As an MVP approach to this, and also a stand alone feature - I’ve come up with an idea that could ease that feeling of frustration as outlined above.
A simple integrated message presented to users before payment, via ApplePay, GPay or in their respective wallets. This message would be dynamic and based on the customers preferences within their Monzo App.
For the impulsive buyer
For the informed buyer
For the money conscious buyer
For everyone (the dreaded “empty” state)
Here’s how it could look…
Designs UI
ApplePay examples
1) For the impulsive buyer - “I just want to know I have enough to pay!”
1) For the informed buyer - “I want to know how much I have in my account first”
3) For the money conscious buyer - “But, how much money will I have left over?”
4) For everyone - The dreaded “empty” state
Expanded ApplePay view
Wallet integration with Apple (solves in-person purchase pain points)
Tests & Findings Data
My next steps would be to run a preference test for the copy used in the UI.
Does it capture the right sentiment? Are these the right groups? Does the emoji match the emotion at that time? Does it remove the “frustration”?
I would also conduct further research on that privacy factor when showing such information openly, like “You have £XX.XX amount left after you pay”. Is this too intrusive and can it technically be done?
I like to think anything is possible and most problems have solutions 😊.
Entry Update 22 Nov 2023:
And just like that, Apple are on the case…
