Fraud

Not necessarily, though. I have had my Barclays card cloned once, and they tried to buy some things in some island in the Caribbean (forgot which one). That was at night, so I was also asleep. I woke up to a missed call, and a text from Barclays, that my card had been blocked due to suspected fraudulent activity, and to call them back. I did (had to wait less than 5 minutes in the queue) and it transpired that the fraudsters had attempted no less than 20 transactions. The first 5 went through before Barclays blocked the card. They reversed those 5, and sent out a replacement which I got three days later. (I was told I could have it faster, if I paid a few quid for next day delivery, but as I had alternative cards available I wasn’t bothered.) So, one could argue that their fraud detection and prevention worked even better than Monzo’s in this particular instance, as Barclays considered the onus to be on them, rather than on me to look out for notifications. (That’s not to bad mouth Monzo in any way! Just to provide a counter point. We all know that anecdotes are just that, but I just wanted to say that “other banks” aren’t always all that bad.)

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The problem with these automated calls is I found with the Coop that the answer was always option 2 to every question, everytime I was fraud checked in 8 years. When I realised this, I tested it. Generally they also blocked legitimate purchases quite often which meant I had to reorder them because even with the call to check, they had already fully declined the transaction.

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I definitely agree with that. These systems have lots of disadvantages, which is why I emphasised “in this particular instance”. I don’t think there is an easy, valid-for-all, solution, and both approaches have their advantage.

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Lyon to Geneva can be done in under two hours by car or train. :smirk:

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When will the location based security be available on Android? Not to mention fingerprint recognition for the app its self?

Long time lurker, first time poster.

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You could go from France to Germany and Switzerland in a few minutes if you’re around the Basel area!

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Good article by Andrew, my own experience recently was coming back through Schipol airport when somehow someone managed to clone my card details as I waited for my connecting flight and tried to make 2 web purchases. Monzo were on the ball and declined the first one as suspicious and told me, I was in the Netherlands, returning to UK from South Africa, and the web purchase was from “Taxify” from Estonia, I froze the card and got on my flight - the next try was blocked because the card was frozen. I didn’t find out about the second attempt of a web purchase until I arrived home, it was from “Vayama.ie” originating in Romania. Monzo were great and replaced the card as soon as I told them of the problem, that was better service and quicker than I have ever had with any bank in over 50 years of banking.

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While Taxify is an Estonian company it could be for a taxi fare in Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth…

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And Vayama.ie “is an online travel agency” based in Ireland where you can book international flights and is part of Travis International B.V. so another European connection with its headquarters in - guess where… Amsterdam https://www.vayama.ie/about . Funny how I never had problems during the 4 weeks I was in South Africa but as soon as I landed in Schipol and bought something my card was cloned - and I have no idea how they did it.

My Monzo app notified me of someone in Paris spending my money on flowers. Proceeded to freeze card, contacted bank with instant messaging, got money refunded and new card ordered all within 20 minutes!

Meanwhile scammers tried to take a further €370 out of a frozen card, while I watch them try to spend it on my phone.

So happy with the new way of banking.

I wonder if Monzo does absorb the cost fraud costs? or do the merchants selling lose out?

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It’s usually the merchant that loses out.

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I thought the opposite. One of us is wrong. :anguished:

The whole point of freezing cards is to save the bank’s money, isn’t it?

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When I was a merchant, customers would create chargebacks for all sorts of reasons.

We were actually very successful in minimising fraud. That said, a handful inevitably crept through.

The banks reimburse the customer and reclaim the money from the merchant unless the merchant proves otherwise that the transaction is legit.

If the card is then frozen, how is the crininal still spending on a frozen card? :thinking:

Merchant liability will depend on how the card transaction is processed, chip and pin, chip and signature, chip and dip, swipe and signature, carbon imprint, etc…as the different types dictate who is liable for the transaction, the bank or the retailer

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I suspect they’re not actually spending and what is happening is there’s a push alert for “Transaction £xx declined because card is frozen” or something similar.

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N26 is using money from the ProFIT program to keep their customers’ money safe by intelligently preventing card fraud before it happens.

Have Monzo obtained any EU funds for this purpose?

Project ProFIT is a platform promoting the financial awareness and improving the financial capability of citizens and other financial market participants.
• Raise Financial Awareness and Support Better Decision Making
• Create Financial Collective Intelligence
• Empower User Participation and Interaction
ProFIT has received funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research & Innovation.

http://projectprofit.eu/about/

To simplify this, as a general rule:

  • For card present, the least secure party is liable, with it defaulting to the issuing bank if both are equal. There are some exceptions, lots of exceptions in the US market where the issuing bank is liable even for insecure merchants (petrol, Visa PIN [not Mastercard, Discover or Amex PIN tho], aeroplanes, etc).
  • For card not present, the merchant is liable unless the bank agrees to take liability through 3-D Secure.

For anyone really interested when I say Visa PIN what I mean is in the US market, Visa doesn’t require merchants to have PIN support for liability protection, and the issuing bank is liable for fraud that could have been prevented if the merchant had PIN support.

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@andrewb this is my concern to read my post of the feature that I want and if accepted then I would gladly move over to monzo totally.

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