I’ve have many debit cards before, all provided by VISA. When paying online, selecting “Visa Debit” is always a fee-less option.
My new Monzo current account card is a Mastercard. I was surprised by this as I thought Mastercard only dealt with credit cards. When, for example, buying flights, selecting a Mastercard credit card always adds a few £££ to the price. Visa Debit always seems to be cheaper.
Is this going to be true with my Monzo card? Are we at a slight disadvantage using Mastercard instead of Visa? Or do these kind of transaction charges only matter when it’s debit card vs. credit card, regardless of who issued it?
The very short answer is that the Monzo Mastercard is a debit card and in these cases, you should not be charged any credit card fees.
Unfortunately, there are a few places online that do not recognise that Debit Mastercard exists and will attempt to charge you a credit card fee out of assumption. In these cases, I would highly recommend letting both them and us know. These cases should become increasingly rare as we’re not the only bank with Debit Mastercard cards nowadays (to my knowledge, B, Clydesdale Bank, Yorkshire Bank, Virgin Money, Metro Bank, Starling, Danske Bank, and TSB from 2018 also issue Mastercard Debit cards in the UK alone).
Hitachi finance charge a credit card fee for Monzo, and repeatedly insisted that Mastercard is a credit card and there is no such thing as a mastercard debit card…
I did managed to get the fee returned from them, but they insisted it was just a courtesy gesture and the charge was correct (5% of the total payment, which amounts to quite a bit when you’re paying off a loan!).
Of course these fees will be illegal soon, but I’m sure they’ll find some other wheeze to make money…
Have you got a source for this? Just interested to know as I can never find anything historical to back this kind of statement up (including in comparison to interbank rates).
Unfortunately simply my own experiences and those of others online, nothing concrete. In my own testing:
MasterCard and Discover are very close to interbank and virtually identical.
American Express tends to be a little worse.
Visa is often up to half a percent worse.
Worth noting a zero FTF Amex like the discontinued MBNA Everyday Plus is still my preferred foreign travel card. No DCC stress. Discover is great because of this too and better rates, but not issued in the UK.
