Blocked Payments

Help
1

I can’t believe I’m asking this, because I already know the answers, but maybe it will help me feel better.

Blocked payments.

I needed to make a large payment (£100K+).
The payment was being made to another Monzo account.
I upped my daily limit in preparation.
The payment was blocked regardless.

I’m now stuck in the “waiting for review” queue. The money has been returned to my account but I can’t transfer any funds, not even between my own accounts. I’m not about to throw my toys from the pram and change banks, but I can’t help but feel that Monzo isn’t much use for users with large amounts of money if I can’t make large payments easily.

Part of me wonders if they have a lot of people transferring funds at the moment due to the ongoing financial crisis, which might be slowing everything down.

2

£100k to another Monzo account isn’t going to be a common transfer.

It’s annoying when what you’re doing is what you want to do, but it’s sadly an extra step these days when so many people are scammed.

3

I use Wise and it’s usually instant, but they sent me an email saying it would be delayed 3 days with the reason: “Lots of people are using Wise at the moment, so it’s taking us longer to process transfers”

But I think your issue is different if the money’s been returned and your account frozen, seems like it’s triggered a Fraud block. Most banks you should be able to call and get it sorted pretty quick? When I had something similar happen with LLoyds, they actually called me straight away to confirm the transaction was legitimate.

4

I had a call from Monzo security. They asked me the usual security checks and asked me to evidence details of the transfer, which I’ve done. I assumed that would be enough, but it’s now been escalated to “senior members”.

If this is just “normal” now for large transfers then Monzo really need to be clear that it’s “normal” so users can plan for it. I don’t know what else I could have done to do this transfer without triggering a fraud check. The money has been sitting in my account for 3 years and it’s going to a family member with a Monzo account. Monzo were happy to receive it at the time, but less happy to transfer it out it seems.

I am, for the first time in 8 years, questioning whether I should be using Monzo as my main bank. I still have my old HSBC bank account waiting in the wings as a backup account.

1 Like
6

I see it as a positive that large amounts of money has extra checks due to fraud etc. after upping the limit I would have also contacted Monzo to inform them of making this large transaction and they could have perhaps authorised the large payment due to calling/chatting to them. If Monzo allow large transactions like this and it was fraudulent, everyone would be moaning how the bank needs more security checks. Unfortunately people will always complain either way :joy: