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Tolerating full cloud outages with Monzo Stand-in

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Re: Tolerating full cloud outages with Monzo Stand-in

#31

Post by fragmede »

fujinghg wrote: post #22
fragmede wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TWO people you know had bad support interactions! Well then.

I’m a statistician. What point are you trying to make? Write it off as an anecdote? It’s not 1999. It’s two observations. Observations lead to questions which lead to collecting more data. Which lead to a conclusion that it is not pretty. When managing risk you judge a company not on a good day but how they handle things on a bad day. And Monzo are terrible. It’s a pattern. Go look and find.

I agree! 1,999 more data points would be better than two, but that seems like a weird number to choose.

You might be a statistician, but I'm also assuming you're human, with messy emotions (I am too). Two data points, even if they're really close and personal for you, is still only that, two data points.

I'm sure I'm going to find complaints. People aren't incensed and go online and post "hey everything's fine and went smoothly and I had no problems" when that's the case, they only do that when they're angry about something.

I don't have a Monzo account but I've been on the Internet long enough to recognize that bias, in myself, and others.

Re: Tolerating full cloud outages with Monzo Stand-in

#33

Post by andrewaylett »

jkingsman wrote: post #11
joshstrange wrote: post #10

Completely unrelated to this blog post but I really dislike Fintech saying "Get paid early" in their promos. It's clearly marketing at someone too stupid to be able to see right through how utterly useless that is. If you are celebrating getting your paycheck 1 day earlier (every time) then your financial literally and financial health are probably in the toilet. They _must_ know they are preying on people with state…

Though, in some cases (like when it's your bank saying it), it's usually just them frontrunning reliable (coming from a payroll provider) and predictable (getting paid the same time each month) ACH transactions with a near-zero likelihood of not settling, then crediting you the money before the ACH is totally settled, so not ALL cases are fintech gimmicks. But most are, and unfortunately, as the proliferation of payd…

Remember that Monzo is a UK institution -- ACH isn't relevant, and they can see the payment in flight if it's using BACS.

https://monzo.com/blog/2019/08/20/monzo-now-lets-you-get-pai...

Re: Tolerating full cloud outages with Monzo Stand-in

#34

Post by quesera »

blibble wrote: post #30
quesera wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an ocean of historical data to predict reversal or settlement failure of ACH transactions. I would guess that payroll credits are the second most-reliable category in the ocean of ACH transactions, right after US Treasury payments. How black would this swan need to be to blow up this stability?

not sure what american payment transfers have to do with UK BACS payments, but ok > I would guess that payroll credits are the second most-reliable category in the ocean of ACH transactions, right after US Treasury payments. maybe some sort of lunatic getting control of the US treasury payment systems? I suppose that can't ever happen

This thread is "completely unrelated to this blog post" and your previous comment was responding to comments about the US ACH network.

Re: Tolerating full cloud outages with Monzo Stand-in

#35

Post by [deleted] »

joshstrange wrote: post #10

Completely unrelated to this blog post but I really dislike Fintech saying "Get paid early" in their promos. It's clearly marketing at someone too stupid to be able to see right through how utterly useless that is. If you are celebrating getting your paycheck 1 day earlier (every time) then your financial literally and financial health are probably in the toilet. They _must_ know they are preying on people with state…

[deleted]

Re: Tolerating full cloud outages with Monzo Stand-in

#36

Post by lol768 »

quesera wrote: post #34
blibble wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not sure what american payment transfers have to do with UK BACS payments, but ok > I would guess that payroll credits are the second most-reliable category in the ocean of ACH transactions, right after US Treasury payments. maybe some sort of lunatic getting control of the US treasury payment systems? I suppose that can't ever happen

This thread is "completely unrelated to this blog post" and your previous comment was responding to comments about the US ACH network.

Right, but it's talking about "Get paid early" - and in the context of this particular post that's a specific Monzo feature that has absolutely nothing to do with ACH.

Do US fintechs offer something similar? Perhaps, but I bet it works pretty differently to BACS where the bank already knows about the money transfer.

Re: Tolerating full cloud outages with Monzo Stand-in

#37

Post by lol768 »

blibble wrote: post #26
simonvc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a risk that was very much understood and it's fully covered.

I've heard that one before

I mean, it's been in production for years, has a cap of £20k and I'm pretty sure the design of BACS means it's very difficult to recall a transaction after the 4pm time when the feature becomes available. Simon is probably in a very good position to know how often that sort of thing happened, if ever.

I'm pretty happy with them offering this based on my understanding of BACS, as a shareholder.

Re: Tolerating full cloud outages with Monzo Stand-in

#38

Post by quesera »

lol768 wrote: post #36
quesera wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thread is "completely unrelated to this blog post" and your previous comment was responding to comments about the US ACH network.

Right, but it's talking about "Get paid early" - and in the context of this particular post that's a specific Monzo feature that has absolutely nothing to do with ACH. Do US fintechs offer something similar? Perhaps, but I bet it works pretty differently to BACS where the bank already knows about the money transfer.

Yes, "get paid early" is a feature that US fintechs and banks offer, and have for years. So in the context of this subthread, it's all about ACH.

The feature is based on the predictable pattern of payroll direct deposits, and/or a pre-settlement view into the ACH transfers for the day. The latter sounds like what you are describing for BACS, but I don't know the UK details.

Re: Tolerating full cloud outages with Monzo Stand-in

#39

Post by chrisldgk »

fujinghg wrote: post #17
sleepgou wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand of payment systems this is so that payments through card machines, contactless payments for public transport, cash withdrawals from ATMs, etc. all continue to work. A lot of those systems are surprisingly insulated from AWS simply by virtue of being extremely archaic

I wouldn’t assume that is the case. The failure modes are different that is all. I saw a whole corp POS platform a couple of decades ago that was hanging off a TFTP server on a machine that no one dared turn off in case the world ended. One day the DC UPS failed, it didn’t come back up and they had no retail operations for several hours while they sent a bunch of cash to a guy who had left to help them fix it. There’…

To add to this, I remember a story my father told me. This is off the top of my head and a few years ago so it might not be fully accurate.

My father worked as a banker for most of his life and when he was in his late twenties he got a position to oversee a smaller investment bank. This is sometime in the late 90s. When he started, he took a general look around, checked with everyone how things are going and happened to meet on of the few IT people working in the building. When the IT guy realized that he was speaking to a new person who might be able to change things around there, he was elated and told him that there was an issue the previous boss never took too urgently, even though it was quite critical. Apparently the servers that were running pretty much all of the transactions of that investment bank were located in the basement of that building and have literally never been migrated, upgraded or anything else. The servers that were left over from that time was literally one running machine and another machine that had died a few years prior that was now only used for spares in case anything on the singular still working machine broke. Since the hardware was so old, there apparently weren’t many replacement parts left and the ones that were left were incredibly expensive due to many bank depending on those specific servers.

Anyway, my father heard that story and immediately got the guy the funding he needed to migrate to a newer and better system. Sometimes I think about this kind of stuff, we think banks are really resilient (and they try to be), but I wouldn’t be surprised if setup like these still exist somewhere because people are too scared to touch them.

Re: Tolerating full cloud outages with Monzo Stand-in

#40

Post by orf »

grey-area wrote: post #13
fujinghg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I’ve been using it for years and have experienced none of what you describe.

I’ve been using it since they where in beta and I’ve never experienced this.

I had one issue with closing an investment account, and they reached out to me to let me know there was an issue and proactively rebated me.

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