Some of you may have encountered a bug when withdrawing cash using a prepaid card which allows you to make free withdrawals from ATM’s bearing this message
“This machine will charge you £x for withdrawals.”
This is a bug which has been fixed in our current account, and we’ve received feedback from the community that we haven’t been as upfront in announcing this as we should have been.
Apologies for the confusion and misunderstanding - our intention was never to hide this from you!
I just wanted to clarify that free withdrawals at these ATM’s was never a feature, rather a bug which we never fixed. We haven’t advertised this as a ‘perk’ of the prepaid card for this exact reason, but in hindsight it would have been really helpful for us to clarify our position on this earlier.
As it stands, on the current account, any fees incurred by the ATM will be passed on to you. For prepaid cards, the bug remains and affects withdrawals at certain ATM’s.
I hope this helps address some of the question marks hanging around this issue more formally. Sorry it took so long - we’ll handle this better next time!
That’s nice of you guys to swallow that cost for so long, tbh I thought it was a feature… shame you had to mention it as I have feeling people will now exploit this.
It was always clear that the bank would never charge. I never tried machines that claimed to charge as I assumed they would charge. Looks like I should have been right even though I actually wasn’t!
I knew about this ‘bug’ as my closest ATM is fee paying and I was never charged by Monzo prepaid when I withdrew money from it. My second nearest is free and slightly further up but an inside ATM and that isn’t always open. Good to know that you are now charged with the current account.
Was it the ATM threatening to charge or the ATM warning that the card issuer may charge?
I think these are two different things, ATM charging is supposed to happen (but doesn’t on prepaid according to this topic) but issuer charges aren’t supposed to happen.
The issuer warning I get on most withdrawals, these are still free?
OK thats cool… I have used the card overseas and paid an ATM fee in Thailand and Laos… So I know theres some add ons overseas, I just didnt know there was in the UK also and wasnt sure if this was clearly differentiated / warned.
Yeah some independent ATMs (like ones in shops) add a charge, which Monzo will no longer cover.
If it says something like: “This ATM charges £x per withdrawal”, or “This ATM charges for withdrawals” then expect to pay the fee (like you would with any other bank)
If it says “Your bank may charge you for using this machine” or “your issuer may charge you”, this is the one that you won’t be charged for.
It depends. Generally speaking if it is operated by a major banking institution and bears the Mastercard logo, it should work and not charge you.
If it only has a Link logo, then the card might not work at all (like Coventry Building Society ATMs).
There’s no rule as to which ones will charge, and which ones won’t, except that none of the main UK banks charge. But there are many non-bank ATMs (e.g. Card Machine) that also don’t charge. And whether the machine uses the LINK network or not is immaterial. The one thing you can be sure of, is that any ATM which does charge will have a prominent notice on the machine stating that it will charge, and it must also present you with an on-screen notification, stating the charge and giving you a chance to cancel.
