Researching into travel money cards to use while overseas I thought I'd made the best choice - no transaction fees, pretty fair exchange rate for USD, no load fees, no exit fees. I couldn't find the flaw. While the money side of things is still fine, positive UX is lacking.
1. The password
I use a password manager so my password was something complicated. Upon login I was asked to enter a few random characters from the password. What is this?! This makes no sense to me, and doesn't seem any more secure to me - if someone already knows my password they too will know the values in these positions. Because there is no way to save the password in the app, and it was too difficult to figure out what the nth value was, I ended up changing my password to something simpler. BAD.
2. The app
The app requires you to enter your travel card number and password every time. There is no option to save the password which is annoying and slows me down every time I want to use the app. About 90% of the time I get an error straight after logging in - making me lose faith in the app.
3. Setting the PIN
At first I wasn't even sure that the card even had a pin. After trawling through the website I found that there was a pin. When I tried to access it via the app I kept getting an error, and was directed to call. I was taken to an automated menu which asked me to enter a whole bunch of numbers and "press the hash or square key" (Square key?)
4. Not being able to type ahead
After listening to the automated menu, I knew I needed to press 1 which I did. But I was forced to listen to the entire automated menu before it would register what i had pressed. Making me waste time before I even get to hold? Not impressed.
5. Being asked for date or birth when they really wanted birthday
One of the audio prompts asked me to enter my date of birth, and of course I didn't bother listening to the rest of the recording - I simply entered "DD-MM-YYYY" and got an error. Apparently what they actually wanted was my birthDAY (i.e. DD-MM)
6. Being put through to a human who just told me what I did wrong and put me back to the automated menu
I found out the birthday vs birth date issue after talking to a human on the phone to troubleshoot what I did wrong (and was blamed for it, rather than recognising the bad design of the automated system) and put back to the automated menu to re-do all the steps again. Couldn't the human have helped with my request.
7. Funds transfer taking 3 days
The card took 3 days for funds to be loaded! Because that's what you want when you're travelling and need money, to have to wait three days for it.
8. Pending transfers not being visible
The app had no visibility of money that you had transferred and was pending, or of pending transactions so you really had no idea what was going on with the state of your balance.
Maybe some fees would've been worth it to have a more enjoyable experience! Next time, I will use a different card.