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Agreed – Discover has great customer support. Their tech stack, however, seems terrible. They had a very messy migration of their Zelle integration and in the p

by lxgr 1y ago

Agreed – Discover has great customer support. Their tech stack, however, seems terrible. They had a very messy migration of their Zelle integration and in the process seem to have broken things for many of their checking customers. Personally, I could neither use it, nor enroll my email address or phone number previously enrolled at Discover with any another bank for several months! Capital One seems to have a much more modern tech stack: Their app is much more usable than most other banks' I've tried, and they're the only US credit card issuer I know of that actually supports 3DS without any ugly hacks that usually mean trouble when shopping at a foreign merchant that requires it. They also support a very neat authentication feature – tapping my credit or debit card on my phone – which I haven't seen with any other bank yet. Let's see which tech stack and which customer support organization survives the merger, respectively...

ethbr1 1y ago
Underappreciated reason, when system observations are made: - Discover was founded in 1985 (credit card only, by Sears) and began banking in 2006(?) - Capital One was founded in 1994 (credit card only) and began banking in 2005 Legacy systems suck, especially if the parent company has underinvested in IT modernization for decades. Delta? Southwest? And younger companies don't have to deal with the pre-digital legacy pain of < ~1990 founded companies.
- lxgr 1y ago
  Counterpoint: Amex has been issuing charge cards since the 50s, and their tech seems leagues ahead of Discover, for both charge/credit cards and checking accounts (based on my first impressions for the latter; I haven't really used their checking account as my main account).
  - const_cast 1y ago
    Yes, Amex has the best app out of all banking I've used thus far. It's very fast, the UI is easy to understand, and you can do what you need to do quickly and painlessly.
    - ethbr1 1y ago
      The under the surface portion of the legacy system iceberg is how agile (and well-defined at interface points) backend systems are. Most of the time, the reason a front end app can't do X is that there's no way to use/modify the internal core systems to do that. So front end shiny is a poor litmus for how well or poorly a company's internal systems are. Agility is probably a better proxy -- given a new business need / requirement (e.g. ACA in US health insurance), how quickly can a company execute on it?
      - const_cast 1y ago
        > Agility is probably a better proxy -- given a new business need / requirement (e.g. ACA in US health insurance), how quickly can a company execute on it? Yes, probably, but I think performance is pretty good sign too. Old legacy systems are often complex so new functionality is always bolted on-top, and not baked-in. Making architectural changes like that is risky. And, third-party integrations are going to be preferred. So over time the application becomes incredibly slow. There's layers and layers of cruft and then calls to third parties around every corner.
mindslight 1y ago
From what I remember last time I checked, Discover supported OFX Direct Connect while Capital One did not. So there can be downsides to a "modern" tech stack.
plumeria 1y ago
> they're the only US credit card issuer I know of that actually supports 3DS without any ugly hacks that usually mean trouble when shopping at a foreign merchant that requires it Is there a good wiki or database that tracks which issuers have good 3DS support?
0xBDB 1y ago
> Let's see which tech stack and which customer support organization survives the merger, respectively... I have no inside experience of either company, but I have been through a lot of large financial industry mergers and I know what's public about this one. I'd bet heavily that it'll be some of both, but tech especially will be Capital One. Because it's larger, because it's the acquirer, and maybe above all because it's newer - a younger company with a younger tech stack that's known to be entirely cloud based.

by lxgr 1y ago

ethbr1 1y ago

Underappreciated reason, when system observations are made: - Discover was founded in 1985 (credit card only, by Sears) and began banking in 2006(?) - Capital One was founded in 1994 (credit card only) and began banking in 2005 Legacy systems suck, especially if the parent company has underinvested in IT modernization for decades. Delta? Southwest? And younger companies don't have to deal with the pre-digital legacy pain of < ~1990 founded companies.

lxgr 1y ago
Counterpoint: Amex has been issuing charge cards since the 50s, and their tech seems leagues ahead of Discover, for both charge/credit cards and checking accounts (based on my first impressions for the latter; I haven't really used their checking account as my main account).
- const_cast 1y ago
  Yes, Amex has the best app out of all banking I've used thus far. It's very fast, the UI is easy to understand, and you can do what you need to do quickly and painlessly.
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    The under the surface portion of the legacy system iceberg is how agile (and well-defined at interface points) backend systems are. Most of the time, the reason a front end app can't do X is that there's no way to use/modify the internal core systems to do that. So front end shiny is a poor litmus for how well or poorly a company's internal systems are. Agility is probably a better proxy -- given a new business need / requirement (e.g. ACA in US health insurance), how quickly can a company execute on it?
    - const_cast 1y ago
      > Agility is probably a better proxy -- given a new business need / requirement (e.g. ACA in US health insurance), how quickly can a company execute on it? Yes, probably, but I think performance is pretty good sign too. Old legacy systems are often complex so new functionality is always bolted on-top, and not baked-in. Making architectural changes like that is risky. And, third-party integrations are going to be preferred. So over time the application becomes incredibly slow. There's layers and layers of cruft and then calls to third parties around every corner.

mindslight 1y ago

From what I remember last time I checked, Discover supported OFX Direct Connect while Capital One did not. So there can be downsides to a "modern" tech stack.

plumeria 1y ago

> they're the only US credit card issuer I know of that actually supports 3DS without any ugly hacks that usually mean trouble when shopping at a foreign merchant that requires it Is there a good wiki or database that tracks which issuers have good 3DS support?

0xBDB 1y ago

> Let's see which tech stack and which customer support organization survives the merger, respectively... I have no inside experience of either company, but I have been through a lot of large financial industry mergers and I know what's public about this one. I'd bet heavily that it'll be some of both, but tech especially will be Capital One. Because it's larger, because it's the acquirer, and maybe above all because it's newer - a younger company with a younger tech stack that's known to be entirely cloud based.