Yes, you are right, I’d probably also use Starling now, too. I didn’t have starling on my last trip though. I’d also still take my credit card, monzo and revolut, just because I like to have alternatives, in case of acceptance problems, loss/misplacement of card (I’m terribly disorganised), fraud leading to card block, or theft/roberry. I like to leave half my cards in the hotel safe or another safe place, and take the other half with me 
This is absolutely not the case. Monzo are probably much better at automatically detecting and blocking fraud than the traditional banks (according to this blog post, and “order of magnitude” better).
The current rate of fraud is an order of magnitude lower than the financial services industry average.
This exact thing happened to my wife in France. She had notifications turned off and fraudulent transactions were attempted. She only noticed a day later when checking her Monzo app, and they had all been blocked (and of course she then froze the card and COps were extremely helpful in getting her a replacement card sorted, offering to post it overseas).
I’m not arguing against using a credit card overseas, they make a lot of sense for car hire, etc. But as a day-to-day spending card when travelling, I’m a lot more confident using Monzo than a legacy bank.
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Why not just use cash? It’s much easier. If I’m in a country with good Mastercard/Visa acceptance, I’ll use my card. If not, I’ll pretty much always use cash. Keeps things simple. I’d rather not fight against the system unnecessarily. 
I don’t like paying ATM fees. I have an American bank account that covers them but then I have the cost of transferring money to America…
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Just to point out that firstly, the “machine learning” (wonderful buzzword that gives everyone a fuzzy warm feeling) is (according to the blog post) applied to topups. Thus not really relevant for this discussion (unless I’m missing something?):
Over the last six months we have significantly reduced our rate of fraudulent top ups using a combination of rules and machine learning based fraud systems.
Secondly, I have no doubt that Monzo has systems in place that are meant to detect fraudulent transactions and block them proactively. They’d be silly not to, because of the liability. However, anecdotal evidence from perusing the forum seems to indicate that there is some reliance on the customer noticing fraud from instant notifications, and customers saying “I’m so glad I have instant notifications, so I can cancel the card straight away” - well, my personal response, based on my personal experience, is “I’m so glad I didn’t even have to bother about it, because my bank blocked the fraudulent transactions before I even knew”. Anecdotes, I know, but without hard data it’s all I have …
I maybe have misunderstood the fraud article, and to be fair I haven’t re-read it recently. But I think the main point is that I haven’t seen any evidence that Monzo is any worse than other banks at proactively recognising and blocking fraudulent transactions. And certainly nothing that suggests Monzo’s strategy is to rely on people noticing instant notifications as a way of solving the fraud issue.
As legacy banks don’t have forums, we don’t know how many people would be posting there at how annoyed they are that they didn’t see fraudulent transactions on their statement until a week after they happened. 
No bank blocks all fraud, there are plenty of people that have to deal with fraudulent charges at other banks. The difference is it can take longer to be aware of the problem.
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The main advantage of 
is it takes minutes for fraudulent transactions to be reversed instead of days/weeks. Personally I wouldn’t even care about how they can block them automatically because at the worst case I’d only be out of pocket for a day at most before COps reverse the transactions.
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Firstly, that requires my vigilance. I prefer (especially when on holiday) to have my bank look out for me 
Secondly, now it’s my turn to say “That’s absolutely not the case” It took my bank no time at all to reverse fraudulent transactions.
Story time:
About two years ago I woke up one Saturday morning to a text from Barclays to call them at my earliest convenience, because of suspected fraudulent transactions. Expecting a lengthy, complicated procedure, I made myself a coffee while logging into online banking and saw my “available balance” about £40 less than I would’ve expected (at that time they didn’t show pending transactions, I think - now they do), so I called them up. I got through almost immediately, and someone explained that over night a total of about half a dozen cash withdrawals had been attempted on some sunny island (I immediately got envious - couldn’t they have taken me, instead of my card?! I would’ve even given them the 40 quid! Anyway, I digress …). The first two were successful, the others blocked as suspected fraud. He asked me to confirm that neither of these were attempted by me, and reversed the two successful transactions immediately afterwards. (I confirmed that when I logged back into Online banking right after I hung up my available balance was what it should’ve been again.) He ordered a new card for me. It would take 5-7 working days to arrive. Did I need it quicker than that? No, I did not (I had plenty of other cards, but I since learned that you could apparently pay extra for 1-2 day delivery, if you needed it quicker). That was the end of it. Took me about 5 minutes to sort out (excluding time calm down my wife, and make a coffee), and I wasn’t left out of pocket at all. I got the replacement card on Wednesday through the mail (i.e. on the 3rd working day), the new PIN on Thursday. They even had a tracking facility were you could track the card production/delivery, but they were so quick that I only checked it once.
TL;DR: I wasn’t out of pocket for a single day, all was sorted out very efficiently and quickly, and my bank took the initiative. 
The biggest difficulty was convincing my wife not to freak out over someone cloning my card - she couldn’t understand how I could make a coffee before calling them Oh, and to give amazon, paypal, and about 1 million others my new card details afterwards was a major pain, of course.
Obviously that’s an anecdote, and I’m sure you’ll find dozens of anecdotes where things have gone horribly wrong. But this is my experience, and I don’t think it’s fair to portray other banks that poorly.
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Is it not only ONE atm withdrawal per month AND up to 200 pounds? Seems FAQ says something like that. Corect me if Im wrong, but I understand it that when new rule goes live we cannot withdraw for example 100 pounds twice a month because only first foreign withdrawal is for free (no matter if you withdraw 30 or 200 pounds).
This is true for old Prepaid cards. You are only allowed one withdrawal so yes if you take £100 that’s it no more for a month.
With Current Account Debit card, you can make multiple withdrawals up to £200 on a rolling monthly basis
Current account T&C are here;
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Frankly, nanos, your bank ‘looking out for you’ just isn’t true. They’re looking out for themselves. You don’t lose out for fraud, they do. Far far more legitimate transactions by travellers are blocked than fraud ever will be.
Of course. I know that, hence my . I was just contrasting this to @anon23935806’s comment, that (if I may paraphrase) he’s quite happy to monitor the transactions himself.
I know that too, but incidentally, despite my frequent travels, and me never notifying my bank in advance, that has never happened to me. (The only transaction I’ve ever had declined because of fraud suspicions was when I tried to top up my Vodafone, Orange and Lebara SIMs within a few minutes of each other. By the time I reached Lebara, it was game over. Lucky, I guess.)
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Insanely lucky. Lloyds/Halifax and American Express seem to be the worst. Amex, not so much because of frequency (Lloyds/Halifax freeze accounts a lot) but because when they do lock you out, they lock you out hard and make you go through one of the unfriendliest and worst designed processes I’ve ever seen to unlock your account.
P.S. I’m not even talking long distance travel with Amex. I’ve been locked out in Stratford (just outside London) for buying chicken and in Bristol at a piercing shop… both times it was an awful experience.
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I have had my first experience with Monzo’s 3% Foreign ATM charges and think there is room for improvement:
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Monzo charging transparency - The 3% fee is included in the transaction, but if you are partially in the £200 free buffer it gets complicated. If you add in any local bank charges which are also in the transaction it adds in more complexity e.g is the 3% on the requested cash only or on the cash and the local bank charges.I would prefer to see a separate feed item for Monzo’s 3% fees.
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Limits - for those trying to stay within the £200 this is possible to check, deep in the menus somewhere. It would be great if it was shown at the top of the feed - similar to how pending overdraft charges are shown - showing you how much is remaining and what that means you can withdraw without being charged. Maybe there is no incentive for Monzo to do this, but hey i voted for a flat charge 1%/3%
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