Flux Changes

From 1st November you’ll have to redeem cashback offers with Flux rather than being able to just like, get the cashback.

Unfortunately, I think Flux usage is now done from my end. Not really interested in using it. Might shoot them an email saying that the whole USP to me was that it was not requiring any interaction. I don’t want to actively police things, if I wanted that I’d be using Topcashback or Quidco.

They should give up on this and just focus on receipts and loyalty if they can’t just be a transparent background process.

Edit: Occurs to me Nectar Connect / AirTime Rewards do a better job now, just sent Flux an email expressing the discontent but with no expectations of a reply/changes.

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Same here. I’ve disconnected it from my Starling account.

It seems like an odd decision for Flux to make, but I’m guessing they’re going to learn the hard way.

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They replied, apparently the end goal is being the AmEx Offers of general banks.

While I get that businesses obviously will want us to actively engage with them for cashback (i.e. accept an offer then go and collect on it), they’ve just ruined the consumer perspective until they can get it to show us the offers via Bank App at the very least

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That’s not good seems a bit of a backward move by flux.

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They explained some reasoning for this on the Monzo forum and I think it’s a fair enough point personally. For one time use offers I completely get their point.

Most people would probably have had Flux connected for the digital receipts in the hope they get some more merchants onboard, the offers is a bonus for most.

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While they still have relatively few merchants supporting digital receipts, I think the offers are important to keep people using the product. Plus it’s a nice “bonus” for keeping your account connected.

I agree with @Recchan that this feels like a strategic mistake, and is throwing away an important selling-point (convenience) of the product. Also, cynically, it feels like they are just trying to reduce how much they have to pay out by relying on people not opting-in to offers they would have qualified for under their normal spending.

To mention, I understand that it’s useless to a merchant as currently used. As a result I understand the requirement to change it, but I personally would have sat down with Starling and the Monzo / Barclays tech leads and worked out how to integrate this into their apps before making people activate offers.

I don’t think it is completely useless to a merchant.

They can advertise the cashback and say you just need to enable Flux to earn it. Pretty good, I’d say. Once enabled, the customer doesn’t take have to do anything again and just automatically “gets” the cashback, which promotes shopping at that merchant.

What’s wrong with that?

So, they’re going to advertise for Flux for free. Also, offers are time limited and, you’ll never know if one is on. So you won’t go out of your way to shop at that merchant. You’ll just overlap sometimes.

With the new system, it’s very useful for a merchant. I know they activated that offer and interacted with my brand. The logo saw them, I’ve made an impression and when they spend I’m going to make a profit from it, too. 10% back on your coffee at Costa is still going to be break even at worse and you could be converted or upsold into profit.

I see what you are saying, but what about making things easy for the customer?

If I have to activate the offer manually, this adds friction and is a frustrating experience (offsetting the “surprise and delight” idea of having an offer in the first place).

They could easily only advertise with a board or something when the offer was running, Flux is the platform so no different to advertising that an Amex Shop Small offer is available (for example).

Even if you didn’t expect an offer and got one anyway, that’s a positive (therefore memorable) experience which will cause your brand to be memorable for the customer.

I think you can argue both ways.

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I thought, what with tracking receipts and potentially integrating existing reward schemes, they were going to be more about building relationships between customers and businesses. It will be sad if they just end up being yet another cashback scheme that gets picked up on hotukdeals from time to time, but nothing else

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If Flux fails you guys can fund me to make something good dw

Also, how would you guys react to another £1 DD clone for the fun of it, out of curiosity

Pointless, I think.

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