"Hot Spare" Card

[terryharman]

I was thinking about Monzo, as I regularly do on a Wednesday afternoon, and I was thinking, If I had lost my card, card stopped working or I had some fraud take place on my card, I would need to freeze my card and then order a replacement. Although Monzo is very quick to get replacements to us, normally the next working day, I thought there may be situations such as being abroad or the weekend affecting these quick delivery times.

Then it come to me, what if you received 2 cards in the post, one card being your ‘main’ card and a secondary inactive card that could be activated at any time in case you I had lost my main card. For example I go out for a night out, I loose my wallet, which had all my cards in! Now when I get home, I’m in a bit of trouble, all my cards have been lost / stolen, its the early hours of the morning so I won’t get my card till sometime the next day and I need to buy some food! With the hot spare card I can open my Monzo app, freeze my card, enter my ‘hot spare’ card number which instantly has disabled my lost card and now makes my ‘hot spare’ card my main card which I can use instantly. Then the next day, I receive my new ‘Hot Spare’ card in case I needed it again.

I hope that all makes sense and don’t sound too crazy!

Your thoughts?

[alexs]

This would definitely be handy & the goods news is, Tom likes the idea -

Two cards for one user

Great suggestion, thanks

Ultimately, once Monzo can provide virtual cards hopefully this won’t be necessary. Jonas has described a process where Monzo could provide a replacement virtual card almost instantly, a similar process to the one that you described here, once a user signs up or needs a replacement

But perhaps Monzo could offer this service in the meantime…

[terryharman]

Ah I missed that thread! Doh! I think virtual cards are great, however not everywhere will accept it. I think a combination of the both would be great

[ChrisBeldam]

Agreed that virtual cards would be great but also agree about how not everywhere will accept them.

I live in a semi rural town around (15,000) people and we’ve only just got contactless card payments at places like Sainsburys/Asda. Some local shops don’t even have card machines yet so I’d definitely need a physical replacement as well until everywhere catches up to cards/contactless

[jph]

For me, this is a must if I am to consider using it as a travel card.

[Justin]

I like this idea a lot , and discussed it with @tristan back in January. As someone who’s about to go on an extended trip abroad, having a spare card can take away much of the worry of losing my main one. It also means that I could leave the spare in the bottom of my suitcase - knowing that if anyone were to get lost, it would anyway not be active, so wouldn’t expose either Monzo or myself to any additional risk.

However, if Monzo cardholders were going to hold several cards, why keep one switched off until needed? Why not instead hold several (for example, one in my wallet, another in my gym bag and another in my car - in addition to the virtual Apple and Android Pay cards on my devices) and use the app to select the card I want to use at any given time?

The app completely removes the need for a one-to-one relationship between the customer’s accounts and cards - so the customer could hold several accounts (current, savings, etc) and several cards, and use each of their cards to transact on any of their accounts at a given time - using the app to flip between them. I believe @jonas referred to this concept back in December as something Monzo were looking into.

[christiaanb]

I would love this too.

I had an ATM machine swallow my card without any warning while I was travelling in Laos. Life would have been a lot easier if I’d simply had a spare card with me.

[JacobSwift]

ould love this too.
I had an ATM machine swallow my card without any warning while I was travelling in Laos. Life would have been a lot easier if I’d simply had a spare card with me.

Snap! Card was also swallowed overseas and a 2nd backup card would have been perfect!

[sacha]

A second card could be useful. Being Monzo it could be frozen by default and then enabled if required. Suspect a small charge might need to be levied to cover the processing costs of an additional card.

Not sure if most customers would really require it, but for those travelling for an extended period it could prove useful.

[Feathers]

This is also being discussed here:

Two cards for one user

I think it would be great to have a spare card on the same account. I travel a lot and having my wallet with all my cards stolen when abroad is my worst nightmare. Often i'll try to leave one of my bank cards in the hotel room in case this happens, but sometimes when in poorer countries the rooms have no safe and things get stolen from the room. Having a spare mondo card which i can leave in the room and block immediately if it's stolen would be perfect for this!