True. Fx business is handled in such an old school way by most banks and I can only think profit as the main reason. HSBC business adds a standard 2.5% on top of Monzo’s EUR to GBP conversion rate and this is considered one of the better deals out there.
Of course one debit for multi currency accounts would be a dream come true but what’s the problem with giving a Euro debit card with the Euro account?
That is how Monese do it and I found I had less issues with it that way than Fire who have one inteligent card that should automatically use the right € or £ account but you end up with ATMs and POS sometimes picking the wrong one and trying to suggest DCC when it shouldn’t even come into the equation
DCC is based on either BIN or the card’s currency code (ideally BIN for magstripe and currency code for EMV). For a British issued multicurrency card this will be UK and GBP.
DCC should be banned but when that was attempted in Australia the card networks were sued by the Australian consumer protection organisation for anticompetitive behaviour (the basic argument as I understand it was that even though DCC actually harms consumers, fighting for it fell within the competition part of their remit; though I must wonder if they’d have taken the same stance if it harmed Australian consumers).
Australia has a weird environment. It is both very hostile to consumers paying by card (surcharges, DCC, etc are rampant), yet card usage is still very high.
Regardless, the big networks haven’t dared fight the DCC giants since. The most we, the consumers, get is the right to chargeback DCC performed without consent.
Use a bank strong for chargeback handling…
Or use Amex but that has its own issues (few zero FTF cards, worse exchange rates).
I believe that it is officially in beta. I hadn’t realised you were looking for a business account and I agree that it is unsuitable for that. At the moment, it’s not designed to be used as a current account, just a way of receiving find in one currency and spending in another.
It does have a debit card, again, still in a limited beta, so could be used to receive funds in a foreign currency, convert to GBP and top up a Monzo account (as long as MasterCard treats that as a purchase as Transferwise charge for payments).
This is a wonderful idea and is something I joined the forum to post about too. It would be great if the staff picked up on it and put it on their roadmap. Having used Revolut and Monzo abroad one must admit I prefer the former due to the simplicity of it all. Monzo does a great but there’s something nice about Revolut knowing “I’ve for x Euro in my account so won’t be able to overspend etc”. Even the option to create a Euro pot (with the ability to make purchases then come out it) would be wonderful.
So to summarise:
What we would like to see is the ability to run multiple currencies from one “account”.
In reality it would be multiple accounts behind the scenes but from a customer perspective one parent account, GBP. With children account, lets say USD and EUR.
This would be like the “pots” you can create, so when you log in you see your main account as GBP with a EUR and a USD “pot” which you can switch funds in to.
For spending any spend in EUR would debit the EUR pot and so on. If the currency pot is empty or insufficient funds then the GBP account is used to debit through an FX deal.
There are loads of great things you can do but one step at a time.
I can safely say that having worked in Foreign Exchange in the city for over 30 years the large banks have the turning circle of an oil tanker, Monzo you have a huge advantage here with being able to move very quickly, seize it. The retail end of the FX market is ripe for disruption.