An offline ATM? I don’t think that’s allowed at all. And would be very high risk. No way to check PIN.
Maybe the original idea behind the toggle wasn’t limited to ATMs only (which I wish it would still be the case, a toggle to decline all magstripe transactions), thus explaining why they’d want to force all magstripe stuff online? Not to mention the “location-based security” which requires transactions to be online so Monzo can check the user’s last location.
Oh, I definitely agree with that. But magstripe will almost always go online anyway so it’s only for edge cases. Like US National Park visitor centres. And I think even they’re getting chip. And some airlines with very old equipment.
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That is a good point!
I’m not sure how much detail we can go into on how our cards are programmed but I will ask for you.
Your card has an offline PIN on it 
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Offline PIN in the magstripe?
Thanks! I totally understand that. I think out loud interesting things and I appreciate how many you do answer and know they can’t all be!
I also realised I used poor wording. Offline decline implies decline before online is attempted. It’s a specific outcome and is not what I meant. What I meant was set to not approve offline (I think easiest is by setting risk counters to zero but I’m not sure) and force online which would fail.
Offline PIN is:
- Never used for magstripe (what I was referring to). It’s a chip feature.
- I believe never used for unattended cash (ATM). I’m not 100% positive on this. I know online PIN is always preferred for unattended cash but I’m not positive offline PIN can’t work.
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To clear up this slight confusion, all ATMs are (or at least should be!) online. Offline ATMs would be incredibly risky and completely open to fraud. 
This is the main reason why we ask people to use an ATM after we have unblocked their PIN as support. If it’s a magstripe ATM, they can at least get cash out using their now unblocked online PIN. If it’s a chip capable ATM, we can deliver an unblock command for the offline PIN. 
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Does that mean that when you unblock the PIN it will get the script to reset at the next contact, online, non-M/Chip Fast POS transaction? If so, great. That’s how it should be.
MBNA absolutely refused to do this for me on a trip once where I accidentally blocked the PIN. Insisted it wasn’t possible and I had to use PIN services on a UK ATM even though I knew full well they absolutely could.
That said, on the flip side they did make sure my card worked the whole trip. Never once did they decline CVM fallback so it just worked as a chip and signature card until I got home and it reset at an ATM.
Yes 
And it will keep trying until it succeeds.
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This sort of has me wondering what the use case of having authorisations at all is, beyond legacy purposes?
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I may have lied 
@RichardR has a much better grasp of these things, I’m very much the pupil!
The whole idea of authorisations is that you can check with the issuer whether the transaction can be approved, and if so ask them to reserve the funds… without actually going through the malarkey of moving the money (this is fairly complicated and ends up going to different accounts depending on region etc.). There is a very short response time at the POS, presentments are very much a batch, back office job done in the background.
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@hughwells gave a brilliant response but a simpler version is ‘authorise or else you might not get the money at the end of the day’ 
… Or worse.
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