Card Acceptance - Getting worse?

Thank you.

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Is this one of those situations where the odd terminal here or there doesn’t understand the alphanumeric auth codes that Monzo use (expecting it to be fully numeric) and thus fails the transaction?

I don’t know. I have been told, by Monzo themselves, that it is a “hybrid terminal” that they do not support. Other banks do, but Monzo chooses not to accept certain terminals that present no issues for other banks.

Any normal customer would not be expected to know. They’d just expect their debit card to work.

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I find myself wondering if this is linked to, or a situation similar to one of the examples given in this post.

Specifically, ones where the key criterion is “if we let any of these transactions through, we would be putting your money at risk.”

In this cases, Monzo’s intentions are to protect you, not simply annoy you.

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I was unable to set up a direct debit with TUI as well, Monzo said everything OK at their end and blamed TUI. It seemed to fail at the address verification stage. Ended up using my nationwide account with no issues.

I just wonder if Monzo support escalate these issues anymore or if they feel that they’re too big now to be classed as a challenger bank and it’s the retailers issue rather than Monzo’s.

Point is, as customers we shouldn’t have to keep making compromises, being an early adopter I am kind of patient however, I wonder how patient new customers are.

I’ve also had issues setting up a direct debit for my car finance, again have contacted support who have not really done anything, again I’ve set it up with the nationwide and then moved all my other direct debits to the nationwide and now treating it as my bill payment account.

I know this seems like a tangent now, I just find it frustrating for you to say let support know and they’ll fix it when that’s clearly not the case in my experience. I still don’t get offered cash back in ASDA and the brand new touchscreen nationwide ATM that I use still thinks my Monzo card is a credit card, asking for language selection and warning of credit card charges.

More on track for this post, I’ve not had any issues using my card at POS/contactless and Apple Pay, on planes (easyJet & Ryanair), Gran Canaria, Kiev, Amsterdam, Berlin, Barcelona and Thailand.

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Anecdotally…

I don’t see how any of those scenarios apply?

The Monzo debit card is not being accepted where other bank debit cards are.

That’s quite some spin. It’s a legitimate business with whom I tried to spend money. Monzo has been clear that this is a type of payment terminal they’ve chosen not to support; it’s not an anti fraud measure.

For a customer, they’d expect to be able to pay using their Monzo card.

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I expect my card to work anywhere I see the MasterCard logo. It is not up to me to check the that whatever payment system is in use it up to the specifications required by Monzo.

Make no mistake this is not about protecting customers. Customers are already protected. This is about Monzo protecting their bottom line at the expense of the customer by minimising the amount of risk they are exposed to in paying out when things do go wrong.

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That’s the crux of the issue. As I say, Monzo was very good on the in-app chat responding within about five minutes but, by that time, I’d already resorted to HSBC.

For Monzo to be a contender as one’s main or only bank account, the debit card needs to work everywhere, as you say. :+1:

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Blockquote It does seem to be a truism that many Monzo fanatics are completely unprepared to accept any suggestion of any deficiencies or failing with the bank.

I have seen this all to often on this forum sadly, along with more levelled responses of course.

I’ve also seen this response tone from customer service at times too.

In fairness Monzo have been pretty good until recently and I’ve certainly had issues with legacy banks in the past. But in the latter they’ve owned up and accepted responsibility, something monzo seem unkeen to do.

For me - Monzo is in my eyes no longer a challenger bank but a professional service therefore I’ll judge it on this such as the initial points raised not by how the app looks.

For what it’s worth I don’t think I personally will ever leave Monzo but instances such as the above have made me reverse my decision to go #fullmonzo and reopen an account with a legacy bank. Monzo for me is now just for day to day spends while I decide what to do next.

The main driver is that while the app is fantastic, some legacy banks are catching up and offer mostly the same. One in fact allows you to have your app on a phone and an iPad.

However what they offer that I just don’t feel monzo does anymore is a strong operational base. You need to ring someone you can do it there and then and it’s resolved on that call.

You want to chat, you can do that do and again it’s resolved. If I’m in an airport and my card declines I don’t want to chat or ring the card and find I get an answer via chat (which is what happened when I actually rang monzo)

I just, personally, don’t feel Monzo are strong enough operationally to bank soley with them anymore.

Thanks for all the replies, interesting to see others have had similar.

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Confirmed as receiving bank issue

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Just a comment here. We do take these escalations very seriously.
I have done tens myself. We try to prioritise by number of monthly users impacted.
The problem is that resolving them is a pain in the :poop:. Sometimes we need to:

  • find the contact of a random employee on their website/LinkedIn
  • ask them to her in touch with their payment team
  • talk to them and figure out what is wrong and if there is nothing we can do, pray for them them to upgrade their ATMs/terminals
  • in some cases we need have Mastercard to arbitrate this

The process can take literally months. In the Monzo timescale this means decades.

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3-4 months ago we got in touch with a big UK supermarket (unnamed for their own reputation) because they were sending us thousands of transactions which are now illegal in the EU (contactless Magstripe). This week they are finally upgrading their terminals!

Read this thread for more details: Why some shops “don’t take Monzo” 🛒️💳️

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Tens or tonnes? :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: :wink:

Tonnes is the amount of weight I got on my last holiday

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There are at least two possible scenarios from that post which could be the case:

When swiping your hot coral card at the payment machine, you get an immediate decline! *5 It turns out this shop is constantly sending us swipe transactions without any of the security data they should have! That means if a hacker tried to replay that transaction or modify it in certain ways, they could get away with it! We don’t want to risk your money, so Monzo declines it.

and

ou tap in with contactless, but… (guess what?) transaction declined. There are two types of contactless payments enabled in your card: one safe, one… not as safe and with no limit! *7 - They were using the unsafe type (CMS) with incorrect data, which looks shady to Monzo.

These are both examples where Monzo decline a transaction because they deem it unsafe, while other banks let the transaction go through.

It’s not spin, it’s a direct summary of the post I linked to - and the quotes above include statements such as those I was referring to when I said that.

The two statements are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It could very well be the case that Monzo have chose not to support a payment terminal because it increases the risk of fraud. Again, as outlined by the two examples above.

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As I say, the scenarios you cite do not apply. This was neither of those scenarios.

Apologies, but the scenarios you cite do not apply and are not relevant to the problem I experienced and am talking about.

Regardless of all that, the fact remains. A standard customer would expect a FinTech debit card to just work in the same way that a legacy bank debit card just works.

Appreciate the feedback, that must be so frustrating at your end. You just assume that there would be an easier way.

You don’t know that. Unless you can tell me precisely what Monzo mean by ‘hybrid terminal’? How do you know that the terminals used in the examples given aren’t hyrbrid terminals?

I grant that, and understand it can be frustrating. But when Monzo come back and explain it is because of something the merchant is doing wrong, I’m able to accept that it’s something out of their control (eg. Post Office) or that they’re taking steps to protect customers money (examples cited above).

I can never use my Monzo card when I visit the Post Office, but I’m not going to blame Monzo because I fully understand it’s all down to Post Office staff processing card transations in a non-standard way in order to increase their comission. So it reflects badly on the Post Office, not Monzo. (And if I could avoid ever using the Post Office, I would.)

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You can use your Monzo card to make purchases at the post office, it’s just the cash withdrawal/deposits they can’t do. They shouldn’t be putting purchases through as withdrawal so worth reporting them.

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