Personal
AKA: My Moniepoint diss track
PS: Retail banking will refer only to banking individuals throughout
In the month Moniepoint announced it entered retail banking, I knew I had to open an account with my up-and-coming favourite. Within a week, I got a card delivered. Sadly, I lost it not too long after after paying ₦2,000 to get the card.
Today, my only bank card is the Moniepoint card and it has been over a year since I first installed the app. So, it is due for a review.
First, some backstory.
Launching “Moniepoint Personal”
Moniepoint Personal, the retail banking app (bank app for individuals) was launched on August 17, 2023. This was the same month Moniepoint sponsored BBNaija. I’ve written my small contribution to whether tech companies should sponsor the show in the past (It is not very polished, ignore the bad writing).
In theory, launching the retail app while headlining the show makes plenty of sense. Many of the viewers are retail customers, maximizing the eyeballs will mean having a product that they can use. A classic case of making a splashy market entry.
While Moniepoint prides itself in how its team built the app in 6 weeks, it’s hard to divorce this from the app being an afterthought as opposed to a part of a product roadmap. Sure, people ship things quickly all the time. But when it’s a Series B company, it is weird.
I didn’t document my experience with the app in the early days but the reviews on the Play Store say everything there is to know, the app had issues and still has issues.
A Mid App?
The first problem with the app is the flat fee on transfers. It may be that using GT, Standard Chartered and Opay insulated me from transaction charges but getting charged a ₦10 fee on every transfer is a loud, “do not transfer”.
I have receipts!
And make no mistake, it’s not the EMT levy or any new fee, it has been that way since the first day. If it is a transfer to a Moniepoint business account, no charge. But card payments don’t attract the fee. You can guess which transaction I try not to do.
I’ll give them kudos for the ease of activating their card and the speed of delivery. It’s a plain card, which I found very interesting until it was time to pay for Spotify (Thanks to my oga for letting me know that the card works for it). I had to open the bank app and write out the card PAN, the expiry date and CCV in a notebook, then input them into the payment page.
UX is not xing
To be fair to them, that’s one of the few times I’d ever need my card details within easy reach. But, like bank transfers, the card is a “no online payments” signal. Hard to argue that this is bad, seeing as the naira card for many banks does not work for online payments. We’ll allow this one slide.
The homepage has a chart displaying how much goes in and out of the account weekly. I wonder who suggested a bar chart. You have the total amount in and out as bars, with the day of the week on the x-axis. You can only adjust the timeframe to a monthly chart — aggregated by week.
To be clear, a line chart is the appropriate choice for such data. The whole point is to show a trend, and where two data points are involved, a bar chart does a poor job of showing trends.
Then there’s the airtime and data purchase screen. Lahawla! I had to update the app to be sure it wasn't a bug that had already been fixed. I tapped the amount I wanted to purchase and nothing happened. Kept tapping, yet, nothing. You know that moment when you think your phone is the problem? Ladies and gentlemen, I had to scroll to the bottom of the page to hit the proceed button. Haba mana! You can be sure I won’t buy data there again.
It doesn’t end there. You can’t see transaction history for airtime or data purchases. Banking app 101! Is this how they want to disrupt incumbents? By having a better app than the bank Providus is gonna buy?
In the early days, the fingerprint authorization wouldn’t prompt when you opened the app, unless you tapped the icon. We are grateful that phase is behind us. But, you can’t complete a transaction with your fingerprint. Only a pin. Are there bank apps that only use a PIN to complete a transfer, with no fingerprint option? Is it GT that spoiled me and I’m asking too much?
I won’t forget the ability to request a new card without deactivating the first one or reporting it as stolen which I noticed within the first month. I guess they caught that one on time and took down the feature but I can’t help but wonder how bad it’ll have been if they didn't.
A feature I never thought I’d need was the reversal feature. You can flag a transfer or card transaction with a Moniepoint POS for a reversal. I did not see that coming until I used it and the money got reversed in under an hour. Très intéressant.
What happens if it is fraudulent?
Not my problem, not my business 🙏🏾
I don’t have a better colour in mind but the yellow is meh. I know it’s because I use dark mode. The interface is cleaner in light mode but it’s not a crime to prefer dark mode right? Is that custard colour the Moniepoint “happiness” colour? No idea but I think grey is a happier colour 🫣
Then there’s lending. Hehehe. The feature isn’t on the app but the website says they give business and individual loans. Who would’ve thought that the blue unicorn would be feeding us some dodo 👀 Maybe I am just a broke customer who isn’t qualified so the feature isn’t available to me or they weirdly think the planned salary advance for employees of the businesses they serve qualifies as individual loans. Either way, it is a sizzling hot dodo.
While putting this together, I saw a blog on their savings feature. It’s prominent in the app but I had never noticed it previously. The three savings plans put them in competition with fund managers like Cowrywise and add to their battle with Opay.
Let’s wrap it up…
Ahead Ahead
This is very different from my recent writings. I know. I apologize to anybody who was expecting better. It won’t happen again, I promise 🙏🏾
I’m still a Moniepoint fanboy, I won’t deny them 😅 I’m sure I was one of the first people to create an account when Moniepoint Personal launched. So yeah, this is a lighthearted review of the app that is slowly becoming my primary account, after replacing GT as my regular transaction account. Those who know me well can testify that this is a slap-on-the-wrist review. If it were Kleg Bank, I wouldn’t be so gracious 😶
Moniepoint’s attitude towards retail banking has been, to put it mildly, poor. It still comes back to the foundation tbh, building a banking app like it’s some hackathon project doesn’t sit well with me. From marketing materials to blog posts, there’s hardly any indication that Moniepoint wants anybody using its retail app.
I’d have expected that you’d get some points when you transact with a Moniepoint terminal and it gets converted into fee reduction or something (MTN’s pulse points comes to mind). But we’re left with a regressive flat fee on transfers and a chart that is there for decoration.
In all the reporting on Moniepoint’s Series C fundraise in October, retail banking doesn’t get any attention. Not their blog announcement, not their cheesy video, not media reports. Their entry into retail looks too much like it was because it is the normal thing to do, as opposed to a market they have an interest in becoming a contender. Chances are, you didn’t know they have an app for retail customers. Won’t fault the strategy, but the least they can do is not deliver a mid app.
Something something bad PR is still PR...
So, download the app and let me know what the onboarding is like. I don’t recall how it went for me but I know I requested a card the same day I opened the account.
My blue card — it’s a Verve card btw— has served me well and I’ll continue transacting with it until I mistakenly collect a new GT or StanChart card.
Thank you for reading my diss track. Please feel free to diss your bank app in the replies, maybe their product manager will see it and fix up 🙏🏾
And quick one, has anyone else seen the Afrigo card? Saw someone use it at a store recently and the colour? ipnts.
My most recent writing was on Moniepoint as well, so you can figure out how I usually write here:
