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At least in the UK, Monzo Bank gives me the ability to create and tear down virtual debit cards that I can name and use to individually identify which card I us

At least in the UK, Monzo Bank gives me the ability to create and tear down virtual debit cards that I can name and use to individually identify which card I used. Each is complete with a CVC number. It's not one time unless you want to do the setup and teardown for every purchase, but the £15 monthly fee includes phone and other insurance and the app exports your account ledger to Excel and CSV. Customer service and vanishing transactions from the app ledger have been worrying me but I was promptly put in touch with management as soon as I dusted off a smidgeon of English idiomatic equivalents to "wtf" and this seems to have been caused by Transport For London running adjustments for the daily Oyster journey payment limit (via taking a holding charge placeholder payment in the way hotels ring fence for your stay on debit cards) so the final amount is adjusted the following day to enable the 0400 end of their day.

dylan604 6y ago
So in 2020, in order to allow the employees to keep banker's hours and go home indecently early, they put a hold on a card so an employee can finalize the transaction the following day rather than just letting the computers handle the transaction to completion? How/Why is this still a thing? Just like why does depositing a check have a hold on it when the computer can quite easily check that the money is available for withdraw, and then move it to the depositor's account? The entire banking industry is so ripe for re-imagining, yet their strangle hold onto the old ways is super preventative from us evolving as a species.
- jen20 6y ago
  0400 is 4AM, not 4PM, and has nothing to do with banking hours. 4am is the cut off time between “days” for TFL (London Transit) services - if you buy a ‘day travelcard’ it is good until 4am the following day. It is guaranteed that if you make several transactions in the same day on TFL (by swiping in/out with a contactless card - or an Oyster card - at the ticket gates), the amount paid will be capped at the value of a day travelcard. I’m quite sure no employee is involved in any of this, and computers handle it end-to-end. Banking in the UK is actually quite reasonable - largely because companies like Monzo have pushed it forward. It’s a constant surprise to me quite how _bad_ banking in the US is in comparison though - and most of your points seem to reflect how US banking works rather than UK banking - as indicated both by the spelling of “cheque” and the notion of using them in the first place.

dylan604 6y ago

So in 2020, in order to allow the employees to keep banker's hours and go home indecently early, they put a hold on a card so an employee can finalize the transaction the following day rather than just letting the computers handle the transaction to completion? How/Why is this still a thing? Just like why does depositing a check have a hold on it when the computer can quite easily check that the money is available for withdraw, and then move it to the depositor's account? The entire banking industry is so ripe for re-imagining, yet their strangle hold onto the old ways is super preventative from us evolving as a species.

jen20 6y ago
0400 is 4AM, not 4PM, and has nothing to do with banking hours. 4am is the cut off time between “days” for TFL (London Transit) services - if you buy a ‘day travelcard’ it is good until 4am the following day. It is guaranteed that if you make several transactions in the same day on TFL (by swiping in/out with a contactless card - or an Oyster card - at the ticket gates), the amount paid will be capped at the value of a day travelcard. I’m quite sure no employee is involved in any of this, and computers handle it end-to-end. Banking in the UK is actually quite reasonable - largely because companies like Monzo have pushed it forward. It’s a constant surprise to me quite how _bad_ banking in the US is in comparison though - and most of your points seem to reflect how US banking works rather than UK banking - as indicated both by the spelling of “cheque” and the notion of using them in the first place.