Card not accepted because "Monzo is not a UK bank"

I would no longer be happy to leave a card to support a tab - have done in the past but now the card stays with me. I holiday frequently in South Africa and the law here is the waitron/pump jockey MUST bring the card machine to the customer, it works well and nobody would dream of asking for your card.

2 Likes

Maybe people have perceived it’s easier to burn a prepaid card than a credit card.

Prehaps the perception is an increased chance of getting away with it with Monzo prepaid.

So, I went to top up my oyster last night using a C2C ticket machine at London Fenchurch Street and noticed this on their contactless point… not sure if this is a legacy issue from the prepaid cards not working on the machines but it doesn’t seem like good promo for Monzo… I didn’t actually use Monzo to make my purchase otherwise I would’ve just tried it to see what happened, next time I will but I thought I’d raise here.

Monzo

1 Like

London Fenchurch Street, huh? Might have to check it out. Out of curiosity, I wonder if any Mastercard works.

At Waterloo, when I tested, I found no Mastercard, American Express or Discover/Diner’s Club worked. They were literally Visa-only (well, I didn’t have UnionPay to test).

1 Like

To be honest, I paid with CHIP and PIN on my Amex so I’m not sure, I’ll have a go next time and report back lol!

I just spent way too much time trying to parse that message. Is it meant to mean “Monzo Cards: Chip & PIN only”, or “Monoz Card is Chip & PIN only”. Neither makes grammatical sense to me … From a grammatical perspective I’d understand it to mean that you are meant to only touch the monzo card’s chip (and pin?!) there, but that doesn’t make sense logically …

NB: While there is some snark in my message due to the perceived erroneous apostrophe, I really think that is very poorly worded, and just really don’t fully get it …

Oh, I agree it’s awfully worded but I’m pretty sure they mean “Do not use contactless if paying with a Monzo card” :eyes:

3 Likes

It’s also not a good promo for the level of literacy of C2C’s employees (or is that employee’s? :confounded:)

5 Likes

This… might be one of the machines that straight up crash if you touch a Monzo card on there. The Chelmsford ones are the same. :thinking:

2 Likes

I always thought that was a prepaid issue and the current account debit cards shouldn’t crash any machines? I could be wrong though… any views @simonb?

2 Likes

I’m afraid I don’t have much insight other than that we get far less of these types of issues with CA compared to prepaid.

I’ll report to our payments team and see what they say!

4 Likes

Monzo has previously asked that Monzo-specific issues get reported to Monzo not Mastercard (easier to catch a fly with honey and all that), but I can tell you that Mastercard reports are at least sometimes followed up on.

When I lived in the US, the police in the town I lived in sent out a thing encouraging shops to ask for ID for credit card purchases (that’s a whole new level of incompetence… police encouraging shops to break their contracts with Mastercard and put their customers at risk for stalking/harassment/etc). I filed a lot of these reports for awhile, and they did work. Of course, I also filed Visa reports and for chains wrote to their head offices (which varied in response from ‘our local managers can ask for ID if they want’ all the way up to very sincere apologetic phone calls from a highly-placed national manager in one case).

I don’t know, specifically, how much difference the Mastercard reports made. A few friends and I made it a point to complain about this practice through every available route and after a few months it pretty much stopped.

PS, for context

This happened right after the Target incident. ID checks would do nothing to prevent misuse of track data, as someone who can make a fake card can easily make a fake ID good enough for this!

3 Likes

I remember in Spain about 10 years ago, every shop asked for photo ID for every card transaction. This was with Chip and PIN.

1 Like

Some stores in Spain actually still do this believe it or not!

3 Likes

And it is reported that ID is normally required in Costa Rica, Uraguay, and Chile, but in many cases merchants will waive this practice for foreign tourists as they do not have local ID!

I guess one of the reasons why I believed that not much would come of it, is that this is mastercard us, which probably isn’t too interested in what we do on this little island :wink:

Another reason is the sheer prevalence of various breaches of these terms, apparently without consequences,which would indicate that either customs don’t bother complaining or mastercard doesn’t bother enforcing, or a combination of both.

I think they do enforce but I’m pretty sure ‘enforcement’ is simply a letter. How many shops tear up said letter? I do agree I don’t think anything further usually comes of it if they ignore the letter.

2 Likes

Too much hassle, I haven’t bothered…

1 Like

Yes that’s one of my concerns.

This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.