T-Mobile's 'Mobile Money' blends prepaid Visa cards and no-fee checking features

http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/22/t-mobile-mobile-money-prepaid-visa-free-checking/

by swamp40 • 13 years ago

48 42 13 years ago

tadfisher4• 13 years ago

Why does anyone involved in payments not bother to QA their Android offerings? I can point out about 20 UI issues just in the screenshots on Google Play. Installed the app; hitting menu items in the drawer stacks Activity upon Activity, breaking the interaction. Everything is non-standard or ported from iOS, when it takes all of half an hour to pop in the support library and use the official Action Bar and Navigation Drawer components. Even worse, the entire app is locked in portrait orientation.

It's shit like this that degrades the Android experience, and it needs to stop. Stop treating Android like the "second platform". Hire people who can push back against shitty design. Use the tools that the platform provides.

untog• 13 years ago

To counter that: what difference does it make? Are users going to abandon this service because the Android app does not conform to UI norms? T-Mobile are going to start caring about this when they have an incentive to spend the time and money on it. So far that doesn't seem to be the case.

I'm the last person to defend Apple but their App Store review process will often reject an app like the one you describe. Google won't. So people develop better apps for iOS because they have to.

tadfisher4• 13 years ago

My objections come from supporting the platform as a whole, not T-Mobile's bottom line. As more popular apps abandon official design guidelines in favor of custom UI that doesn't work, it makes using the platform an inconsistent and jarring experience, and that hurts the platform as a whole.

Really, I'm surprised that T-Mobile doesn't get this, as their business relies in part on selling this platform to customers.

Google could do more, yes, but doing so would erode the relative openness of Play Store app submissions. They provide the tools and the guidelines, and that should be good enough. I can't think of any other platform where a straight port of another platform's UI is a standard or acceptable practice.

toomuchtodo7• 13 years ago

Minimum Viable Product. Don't waste time iterating until there's traction. Isn't that what we preach around here?

tadfisher4• 13 years ago

In this case, they put in extra work to port the UI from their iOS app. Doesn't exactly scream "MVP" to me.

Zigurd2• 13 years ago

There is a very big difference between an app that can be limited to newer Android versions and one like this that must run on buggy, old, un-capable of using newer UI widgets versions. While inclusion of ActionBar compatibility is a big improvement in the usefulness of the Support Library, it's still not a zero-cost, zero-risk decision.

Some of what you are complaining about is valid, but an up-to-date UI can reasonably NOT be the top priority for an app of this nature.

tadfisher4• 13 years ago

In what world does dropping in a Google-supported library, tested on multitudes of hardware and OS combinations and used widely by developers, cost more than rolling your own UI components and testing them yourself?

ahomescu1• 13 years ago

I'm surprised they didn't call it "T-Money".

toomuchtodo7• 13 years ago

Their domain, t-mobilemoneyservices.com, drives me nuts. Why not use money.t-mobile.com?

Also, t-money.com looks to be taken by someone in South Korea since about 2004.

thirdsun• 13 years ago

Yes, if it wasn't for the t- I could easily see that domain belonging to some fraudulent/dubious ponzi scheme business.

maxerickson2• 13 years ago

It's amazing what things have come to. They have disclaimer footnotes for 3 of their 4 headline claims and the remaining one is conditional on being a T-Mobile customer.

And there are so many fees, especially for people that don't have a T-Mobile phone.

I guess when/if interest rates go up these things won't be very popular.

benologist• 13 years ago

Actual source: http://multimediacapsule.thomsonone.com/t-mobileusa/mobile-m...

mikestew• 13 years ago

What I don't get is the intersection between "take a picture of a check with smartphone" and "for people who can't get a checking account". I'm going to assume that T-Mobile believes there is a sizable market of people with $600 phones who can't get a checking account, but really?

cwyers• 13 years ago

They're letting people pay for the phones in installments, and you can get a Nokia Lumia 521 on T-Mobile for under $100 up-front these days.

toomuchtodo7• 13 years ago

I'm going to assume that T-Mobile believes there is a sizable market of people with $600 phones who can't get a checking account, but really?

Really. You'd be surprised what you can buy with financing (hello "Buy Here Pay Here" loan shark car dealers). T-Mobile isn't doing it out of the goodness of their heart, but they're definitely going to cannabilize check cashing businesses.

https://www.google.com/search?q=unbanked+statistics

MartinCron• 13 years ago

Hey, if it hurts the predatory check cashing/payday loan industry, that's OK with me.

a3n• 13 years ago

My gsm android cost $200 unlocked.

And my bank won't let me take a picture and cash a check, so this would be interesting to me even if my phone cost $600.

cbr• 13 years ago

    $600 phones

Smartphones get cheaper and cheaper. Last year it was the $300 Nexus 4, now it's the $180 Moto G. And that's for mid-tier phones; the low end of Android goes very low.

Guvante2• 13 years ago

People in the US don't pay for their phones outright, anyone can put together $100 for the down payment.

10feet• 13 years ago

Most Androids sold are not of the $600 variety, but around $100-$200, from companies you have never heard of before. And they are new, not including the second hand market.

BrandonRead3• 13 years ago

It looks like a lot of unsuspecting participants blinded by effective marketing are about to get ripped off hard. "Retail Purchase Fee: $4.00" From https://www.t-mobilemoneyservices.com/NeedHelp/Fees Let's just hope folks using the service have a T-Mobile number! With the average debit card holder making about 18.3 purchases per month (and likely more for the targeted demographic because many in this starvation-wage tier have to make more purchases due to lack of sufficient storage or time), it looks like a nice $75/mo unannounced subscription fee.

kemayo2• 13 years ago

The phrasing of "No charge at participating T-Mobile stores; if purchased elsewhere, the fee will be refunded to card account within 30 days" makes me suspect that fee is actually just the cost of getting the initial card.

BrandonRead3• 13 years ago

Thanks for that clarification, I got pretty worked up thinking they were being that scummy.

hartard• 13 years ago

From https://t-mobilemoneyservices.com/NeedHelp/FAQs > What are the fees for my T-Mobile Card Account? TRANSACTION FEES:

POS PIN Transaction No charge

POS Signature Transaction No charge

BrandonRead3• 13 years ago

Thanks, I was clearly out to be angry at T-Mobile for no good reason. Maybe it was the 6 fine-print items on one of their pages that set me off...

gambiting2• 13 years ago

Checks? Visa card without chip-and-pin? Is this the nineties again?

kemayo2• 13 years ago

It's American banking.

Guvante2• 13 years ago

It is aimed at people how have difficulty getting a checking account, making direct deposit complicated.

If you don't do direct deposit you get a physical check.

Also chip-and-pin is worthless in the US until they do a big push for it, since merchants wouldn't accept it at the moment.

gambiting2• 13 years ago

And outside of US, cards which are magnetic only are refused in more and more places, because of either company policy due to a large number of fraud,or just straight up lack of terminals to process them.

Also, I think I've only had a single check in my entire life - I don't even know what I would need to do to issue one, and I run my own company. So it also must be an American thing.

T-Mobile's 'Mobile Money' blends prepaid Visa cards and no-fee checking features

Related Stories