Novo - Small Business Checking

I am based in the USA and only use my card within my state and one that borders me. My card information got stolen somehow and has been/is currently in use in INDIA!!! It took two charges of $140 before Novo froze the card. My personal bank account with another bank has caught fraud when it was at an unusual store in a neighboring city. Novo wasn’t able to catch a plane ticket being bought in India. FREAKING INDIA?!?!?! That should be an immediate, automatic rejected charge. No questions asked and no need for any input from me. Now I’m out of $300. Novo said they’re working on it, but based on reading some other reviews I am beginning to be convinced of the following: they don’t care about fraud, or they are secretly stealing our money and pretending that it’s fraud. Just not enough money to where people catch on. To be determined. Either way I am looking for another bank. Update: they resolved both disputed transactions within 2 weeks and the money has made it back to my account. Other banks will immediately refund the money in these situations, but oh well. At least I got it back. I no longer think that they are secretly stealing money haha. I was very upset initially. Still, Novo needs to beef up their security to where out-of-country charges are immediately declined unless the business has let them know ahead of time that there will be out of country travel. My personal bank account does this and I expect no less from a business account. I’ll stay with Novo for now.

I’ve been with Novo for almost 2 years, and am really happy with them. They’re super responsive, have lots of integrations and are constantly improving. My only gripe is the app. It’s fine but has one pretty big flaw that’s never been fixed. It doesn’t have a real time view of your account. You have to go into activity, change the time period and then it refreshes. If you don’t change the view (eg from 1 wk to 1 mo) before pulling down to refresh, it doesn’t show new data. And this is true even if the app loads for the first time since restarting the phone. And sometimes, activity shows on the Home view but will never show in the Activity view (like it’s too new to show, but then why is it on the Home view?). The web app never has this issue. It’s not a deal breaker, but resulted in some issues with transfers where I thought something didn’t happen because it wouldn’t show, or thought my balance was one thing when it was another. No other banking app I use has this issue, so it feels like it needs addressing. And it happens on all mobile devices I’ve tested, so it’s not just my phone. Hopefully they get around to this issue, but I’m still a fan of Novo.

My friends are small business owners of a recruiting firm and they told me to sign up with Novo. I was honestly hesitant because ‘digital banks’ seem like they might be clunky...I mean, big banks have mobile apps too so I was curious what the difference would be. The app looks minimalistic, which in a way I like, but on the other hand is like limited functionality. Big banks are always difficult to get in their mobile app, they never remember my ID touch and there’s so much freaking noise which it makes it a pain to use. Novo gives me no problems logging in and everything is so simple and easy to use. I can just get in there, see what the transactions are and the financial health of my business at a glance. I’m always on the go, so having everything up front and accessible, in between meetings, makes this a huge time saver. I just submitted my travel notice for my next work trip abroad, hoping there is no issue with my debit card?? I kinda wish they had more resources or helpful articles within the app that relate to Novo or just other cool things like coming up features like Acorns. Also, their customer support is pretty fast at responding too, I like the chat feature cuz I hate being pipped into a robot that eventually puts me in touch with a person but takes 40 min to get any clear answer. They did a great job with the chat. So far, this is the best mobile app I’ve used for banking. They’re also relatively new so it’s cool to be part of something that’s gonna get better with time.