Gah. So frustrated. Merchant keeps taking a regular payment from me and Monzo won't stop it

Sorry, but I don’t bow down in submission just because it’s the FCA or the EU that says something stupid. Sneering at me for it doesn’t convince me either.

It doesn’t matter who it is. It’s language that doesn’t fit the factual reality so that makes it very loose - it’s placing a requirement on banks that’s impossible to meet as written.

No, they don’t. If you read what you linked you’ll see Barclays simply block all payments to the merchant which is all they can do. That is not “Cancelling a CPA” and should not be pushed as such. Monzo can do the same as far as I know (from previous threads).

Or better yet, set them up in such a way that banks actually CAN cancel them.

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Sorry to be blunt but it doesn’t matter what you think I’m afraid. It doesn’t matter what Monzo thinks either. It doesn’t matter if its bad regulations. It doesn’t matter if it causes problems for Monzo. The regulations are very clear, the interpretations of the regulations are very clear so Monzo needs to follow them.

Yes, it might be hard for Monzo to stop them, but judgements have recommended they should try or refund them when they occur. Monzo are an ingenious bunch of engineers. I’m sure they have a way to deal with this type of thing. If they don’t, I’m sure that they could make one.

The OP needs to submit their complaint and they should win and get a refund based on the regulations. That is the advice needed for the OP in this help section.

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Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing with any of that but I find it very frustrating that anyone is capable of passing regulation that’s impossible to meet as written leading to the sort of fudge that this whole thing has turned into.

If a blanket transaction ban is the only way to comply then of course it has to be done and, as far as I know, the Monzo approach is exactly the same as the Barclays approach already referenced, but I’d far rather our regulatory bodies applied a bit of intelligence to the situation and either ‘fixed’ things so they work properly or ban them entirely.

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The issue seems to stem from the fact that there’s no such concept as a CPA in the sense everyone thinks of them (like direct debits) - it’s just the term used to describe a customer providing card details to a business and authorising offline/customer not present transactions as per some agreement you have with them (which aligns with the documentation you linked to from the FCA). If CPAs were anything more, we wouldn’t still have people explaining how easy it is for Monzo engineers to allow card payments to come from a pot.

Using an online marketplace as an example, I have “a CPA” for Prime, but when the transactions goes through, in most cases it’s not obvious what the transaction was for - it was just merchant x, for amount y.

Unfortunately, CPA seems to have become synonymous with “transactions specific to a subscription that the bank are aware of” which isn’t the case. That means that in order to “block” an CPA, you’d have to block the entire merchant outright.

Where the confusion has probably started is if the OP has been asking Monzo to help with “cancelling payments for a subscription”, then the first tier COPs are right in what they say - you’ll need to go to the merchant to terminate the agreement you’ve made, BUT the OP could be clearer and ask that ALL transactions from the merchant are blocked (if they haven’t already done so) - probably by going through the “something’s wrong with this transaction” flow. I’d then agree that Monzo are responsible at that point for helping.

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The sling tv website works fine when using a VPN, so that seems to be the easiest option here.

Shame it doesn’t work like PayPal.

I always find it amazing how many businesses have wrongly setup their one-off payments to be future pre-approved. Something like eBay, Spotify, Netflix yes, but not Snapfish or Safetots limited. Luckily it’s trivial to revoke permission but I wonder how many people don’t realise it.

I find it impressive how every thread about cancelling a recurring payment/DD/etc will always have some people strongly defending the merchant (no matter how uncooperative or plain wrong they are), spreading unsubstantiated concerns about credit reports and arguing that Monzo should place some random merchant’s interests above their own customer’s interests and not allow him to decide who is able to take money from their own account.

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I’ve not seen that in this thread? (OK, with excessive spin I could frame some posts in that light but it would be hard work.)

Without a re-read, the furthest anyone has gone is to say that simply cancelling the means of payment may not act as a contractual release mechanism.

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I’ve not seen anyone explicitly defend the merchant myself either, rather defending the process of CPAs. Perhaps in the other threads they allude to?

The rest of the comment in the context of this thread feels quite fair though.

Just saw this from Revolut today. Would be nice to see Monzo do something like it. I believe the block feature just blocks the merchant completely though, but the user has control and can block or unblock merchants however they like.

Seems like a useful feature to have, especially with Monzo’s push towards self serve, giving users this level control should reduce the number of people getting in touch with support over such issues.

I believe Lloyds bank just introduced this feature too

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That’s not necessarily true - if a CCJ is lodged it’ll certainly show up and if it gets transferred (legally transferred, not collecting on behalf of the creditor) to a debt recovery company it may also show up.

A few quotes from (former) Monzo staff about CPA’s and your ability to cancel them in past threads:

And something from Citizens Advice that may be useful:

And per the FCA:

REMEMBER: IT IS YOUR RIGHT TO CANCEL CONTINUOUS PAYMENT AUTHORITIES DIRECTLY WITH YOUR CARD ISSUER

But wether or not Monzo can “see” the CPA - is irrelevant - you have the right to stop the payment.

All of this of course made harder by the fact that they are a US based provider - and so the advice of “VPN” and “Cancel your card” are probably the best here.

It of course won’t change your legal obligations.

Edit: Whoops didn’t realise the original problem is a week old now!

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Which is my biggest worry about Revolut and Lloyds branding it as a mechanism for cancelling subscriptions, as it doesn’t.

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Yeah it’s a worry. I can see it being alright for the Netflix/Spotify style which tend to be “we will stop your access to Service if you don’t pay”.

But gyms and other things if you have a contractual agreement… I hope in the app at least it covers that box.

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As long as you’re not using the service, it’s very hard for them to enforce against a consumer these days

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In my opinion, cancelling your payment, or not paying for a service you subscribe to should be deemed as you cancelling that service, unless of course there is a minimum term in your contract.

But then if that ever did become a rule to protect people, I’d wager that we’d start to see a lot of companies move to billing in arrears to put people off cancelling as you would to cancel with them directly and in advance, or to make the timing more complex that they squeeze an extra month out of you.

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Gyms should be using Direct Debits for this purpose imo.

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Last gym I joined a while back had a calendar month rule. So whenever you joined they wouldn’t consider the 1 month notice period to start until the 1st of the next month… and notice had to be given in person.

Mind you, they weren’t the worst… rolling contracts are the worst (if you don’t cancel on the last month you start a new 12 month contract & can’t cancel for another year). Even direct debits don’t help there.

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