I just tried to buy a postal order at my local post office and the card machine said not valid when I put my monzo card in. The guy kept saying that you’re not allowed to pay for postal orders (which are effectively cash) with a credit card. I explained that it’s not a credit card it’s a debit card but he, and the machine were not budging.
Am I going to have this trouble if I try and buy foreign currency as well for example?
Thanks
I actually had to get a postal order last week and was told you could only pay for them in cash by the post office
I ended paying with my Natwest switch card
Some franchise Post Offices do not process card payments correctly in order to save card processing costs. They attempt to charge your card as an ATM withdrawal through the Link network and as Monzo isn’t a part of Link, it rejects. There is a thread about it somewhere.
Some 25 years ago I was unable to buy a postal order with a debit card at a main post office and was told that they only accepted cash for postal orders. (of course rules by now may have changed). What still makes me laugh at this is that she watched me put the postal order in a padded envelope containing another item and then accepted the debit card for the registered postage.
It might be similar to stamps. When I worked at Clinton’s we weren’t able to accept debit or credit cards just for stamps. They are legally ‘cash’ so they are bought at price, therefore selling them via card incurred a cost and would lose money, so you had to do cash or buy something else with them.
Though I find post office’s that are franchised out to family supermarket style places the worst and just trying to make any cash they can from people using the services. I once had one who made me buy a pen to write an address on an envelope, refusing to even let me use the pen they had in their hand.
Postal orders? Switch cards?!
Is this a thread from 1992?
DVLA accept cheques or postal orders only for paper based stuff
Coming up, a new thread “Why do Monzo not support postal order imaging?”
Postal orders are useful for silly places (like the local council for its parking permits) that won’t accept payment any other way, in the absence of a cheque book.
Post offices though won’t touch anything other than cash to pay for them, which is a PITA.
As I said, I paid for it with my switch card.