Quite a few banks offer ATM fee reimbursements in the States. Especially for banks that donāt have physical locations. Thereās usaully a limit to this, like limited to 5 atm withdrawls a month.
And even if Monzo doesnāt want to offer fee reimbursements, itād be a good idea to get into one of the networks that allow for fee-free withdrawals (Allpoint or MoneyPass). It wouldnāt be as ideal as fee reimbursements, but itād be better than nothing.
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Yeah Iām with ING in Australia and they reimburse any overseas fee an ATM charges you. Itās amazing especially in countries like Thailand that card like 8 dollars to withdraw cash
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Honestly, Thailand is absolutely crazy in this respect. Iāve been charged less to use an ATM in Vegas than in Bangkok.
Iām curious to fully understand how ATM fees work in the USā¦ coming from the UK, where ATM fees generally arenāt a thing, it was a bit of a shock to see some ATMs wanting to charge me $5 to access my own money when I went to NYC a couple of years agoā¦
(To be fair, that was a fancy Wells Fargo ATM in a main tourist area, that provided the ability to choose how you wanted your cash, but $3 was pretty common).
Typically if you are a member of that bank itās completely free. If I have a Bank of America account and go to a BoA ATM, itās free. But if I go to a UMB Bank ATM they will charge a 3 dollar fee or higher. Itās the bank charging the other institution and the institution passing that over to us.
Payments here in general are absurd. I have to pay a 4 dollar convenience fee for example for paying utilities online. My only other option is mailing a check or calling it in.
But surely ācalling it inā requires more resources on the part of your utility company, what with them having to pay the person on the other end of the phoneā¦? Nonsensical.
Yeah. I donāt disagree. I think it should be illegal. We need better consumer laws in the US.
Often Utility companies are state run, so switching to payments which reduce resources (jobs) is likely bad PR
This would be amazing. So jealous of those people whose banks do this.
Will Monzo be a part of the Allpoint or Moneypass network?
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Does anyone know what interbank network Monzo is part of? It does not seem to list anything on the back of the card other than MasterCard which is a tad unusual.
I want to ensure I choose a free ATM if and when needed. 
Their cards only use MasterCard.
I find this a bit unusual, since I thought that US debit/prepaid cards are all required to support more than one network thanks to a law called the Durbin Amendment, which basically states that for US prepaid/debit cards, issuers must make sure their cards support more than one network (usually a major ācreditā network like Visa/MC and another national or regional debit network like NYCE, Pulse, or Maestro, though thereās also a āno affiliated networksā rule so a card that uses MasterCard as its first network canāt have Maestro as its second network without also including a third, unaffiliated network) so that the merchant always has a choice of network to process the transaction over.
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That seemsā¦ strange. Itās entirely possible the Monzo US card does have one of the weird US interbank networks, but I wouldnāt know. Itās very weird, here in the UK cards only have one AID - either VISA/Mastercard for both debit and credit cards.
Most of the existing banks are also a member of LINK, which is the main ATM operator in the UK. Monzo isnāt, though, so in the UK Monzo cards only use Mastercard (which does mean that they donāt work in some LINK only ATMs, although these are rare).
Yeah, this new rule was brought about in the US by merchant lobbying; basically the idea was that if each card had to have at least two different networks associated with it, it would create competition for lower fees. That combined with a cap on merchant fees of 21 cents + 5 basis points for debit cards (the other part of the new law) was supposed to cut the costs of accepting debit cards in US stores. I havenāt looked too closely at interchange rates since, so I donāt know if itās actually helped.
Also, I donāt have a smartcard reader on me right now but in all other US debit and prepaid cards there are two AIDs for this reason- thereās a āUS Debitā AID as well as the Visa/MasterCard/Discover AID, and itās the āUS Debitā AID (shared by the other networks) that acts as the AID for the second network. Itās definitely weird. Canada has something similar but itās purely international/domestic- Interac Debit (their national debit card network) AID is always used when in Canada, Visa/MC/Maestro Debit AID is used when out of Canada.
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From Blog:
Weāre really excited to announce that weāre fully live with our MoneyPass ATM network integration - which means that US Monzo customers will now receive fee-free ATM withdrawals at over 38,000 ATMs within the country 
You can check out a convenient location for you by using their ATM finder here
No need to enable the feature, just use your card at a MoneyPass ATM and it will be fee free!