Hi all, I’m sure it’s not news to some of you that the first Glastonbury tickets go on sale this evening. I had a question regarding buying them with a Monzo card, and would be grateful if anyone could please share their experience.
Usually, when you buy a Glastonbury ticket, the purchase isn’t posted to your account immediately. The transaction hits sometime later - usually 30-90 minutes later. I believe this is due to the sheer number of transactions Seetickets need to process in a short time.
With SCA rules coming into effect, how will Monzo handle such transactions? Will I receive a notification from Monzo when I submit the payment, asking me to authorise it? Or will this authorisation request only happen later - or not at all?
Grateful for any informed input any of you can provide - particularly from the Monzo crew. Just four hours to go!
How it’s supposed to work by the standards is that if they do 3D Secure verification, you’ll be redirected to Monzo at the time of checking out to authenticate the purchase, then need to go back to the ticket website to finish off, and you won’t then see the transaction appear in Monzo until they actually process it later.
How it will actually work on their side is another question.
Hi @Rika, thank you for your quick reply. My expectation is that they’ll do a card check at the time of the transaction - and the deduct the funds later.
I’m currently abroad, and my fear is that they’ll attempt to post the transaction (which Monzo would then require me to verify) some hours later - which could be at 3-4am here - which would make it pretty awkward.
I did consider using a card from a legacy bank that hasn’t yet implemented SCA in the same way, but am concerned that they’ll be much more likely to decline a transaction that originated in Indonesia.
Using a VPN to pretend I’m in the UK would make it less likely that the other bank would decline the transaction. However, I think there could also be benefits to attempting the transaction from abroad. Apparently Seetickets may allow through a greater share of overseas visits to their website.
Will let you know how it pans out. Thanks again for your reply.
A quick update on this, for anyone planning to use their Monzo card to buy Glastonbury tickets on Sunday.
I got through during the coach sale, and opted to pay with my Monzo card. When I submitted the payment, the screen immediately indicated the payment had gone through. There was no need for a Monzo notification, or for me to authorise the transaction.
Yeah, as @Rika said, they will probably do an authorisation request, which will take you through the 3DS process. Later they will submit a request to settle the pre-authorised transaction.
Edit: doh! Didn’t see your response! Glad you got tickets
To be honest, I’m quite surprised at our outcome. I’ve never before managed to get through during the coach sale. I’ve always just used it as an additional opportunity not to be missed, and to check out how different browsers worked on my computer, iPad and phone.
I purchased last year with my Monzo card.
The transaction is posted straight away with no additional verification. In fact there’s a good chance you’ll get the Monzo notification before the website loads to say you have a ticket.
That said it does look like See Tickets have done the groundwork to introduce additional verification but it doesn’t seem it will be active this year.
The screenshots shared by the festival of the booking process show a 5 minute timer on the payment page, during those 5 minutes tickets are held for you. Presumably this is to allow verification to take place.
Hi @RichardL, thank you for sharing what you went through. It feels like SCA hasn’t been implemented yet - or else Seetickets have decided to “trust” transactions: the buyer’s name and address are on the ticket itself, so it would be very easy to identify the perpetrators of any fraud!
There were definitely no additional verification steps when I got through on Thursday, and the payment was immediately posted to my account.
The only additional step I had to go through related to the payment screen crashing when I got halfway through. The counter was locked on 04:10, and although I’d completed all the fields, I couldn’t hit submit. My only option was to click “Back”, lose the London coach tickets I’d selected, and then re-select some others. By then, London Wednesday tickets had sold out, but I was lucky to find 6 Reading tickets.
Obviously, such an additional step is only a real pain during the coach ticket sale, due to changing availability of departure points - or right at the end of the Sunday sale, if tickets sell out during that wasted minute.
So we managed to get just 6 of our 20 tickets this morning but the website was absolutely dreadful.
The first time I got through to the site I put in all our details and couldn’t proceed any further, others in our group had the same experience where they couldn’t proceed any further at certain points and the site being completely unresponsive.
When SCA does come into full effect it’s going to make buying tickets even more difficult. The handoff between SeeTickets and the bank and back again introduces more points for the system to fail. The silver lining I guess is that we’re all in the same boat and it’s going to be a lot more difficult for people to share card details for somebody else to pay for their tickets which I’m aware happens on a large scale for these sales.
Didn’t manage this morning either. Both days I got through to the registration page and submitted my details before being told there were no tickets left! Oh well, try again in April I guess.
Sorry to hear that. We didn’t do as well as we’d hoped. 12/24 today, bringing our total to 24/36 - but in the end, it still means that over the two sales, only four of us got all the way through.
Some people will claim the system is terrible. I actually think it works quite well. It feels quite fair - everyone has the same chance of getting through.
I’m hoping that when SCA comes in, Seetickets will trust the card holders, meaning no additional authentication is required. After all, with everyone’s name printed on the tickets, it wouldn’t be that hard to identify those perpetrating fraud.
Oh yeah I have no issue with the process as a whole and generally it’s quite fair but I do think that once you’ve been provided access onto the booking site it should be a fairly smooth process and you shouldn’t be running into the technical issues.
From what I understand, unless the current £50 deposit is reduced to the equivalent of below €30 SCA will be required by law once it comes into play following the delayed launch. I’m sure @Rika will be able to expand on that though. That’s not too bad for us folk who bank with Monzo, it’s just a case of approving via the app, but can you imagine if you had to wait for a code via SMS for example! That could be the difference between getting a ticket or not.
I’d like the option to pre-approve transactions, so that time-sensitive ones go through without the additional hassle. I hope it’s something that’s considered once SCA lands.
