I’ve had it not work twice too in the US.
This is why I took multiple cards
I’ve had it not work twice too in the US.
This is why I took multiple cards
Well that’s true, and I did have spares for this exact reason. I’m guessing I was so used to just having Monzo et al just work.
Overall its been fine apart from those occasions, my rough logic is that in both cases the transactions were over €100 and the chip & pin was the problem.
Mine were both mag strip swipes and they didn’t seem to have a handheld card terminal to enter the PIN into so just had to use another card. Probably would have worked with the chip but there’s still a lot of card swiping in bars and restaurants here.
Final summary of using the HSBC Global Money account for those considering it. For context I’ve only ever used Monzo aboard previously as a sole spending card. The below was in Greece.
Acceptance was very patchy. For the most part it was fine but there were times where I had to revert to Apple Pay or even a different card.
It worked really well in terms of picking from the Euro or GBP card automatically. It did work on the plane but Ryanair still haven’t collected it and I don’t think they will. Not sure why.
I think it was ok enough for me not to bother having a back up if I didn’t already have Algbra which worked really well.
EDIT: I converted to Euros in advance but I didn’t realise that only the base currency is plugged into open banking. So if you are after connecting it up to Lumio or Emma for example, you may wish to consider leaving as GBP.
Plane?
I ?
Autocorrect madness?
Eesh, it’s been a long day. Started in Corfu now back in t’North West.
Also I used the credit card for a couple of small purchases mainly because I couldn’t be bothered topping up the euro card and I was surprised to see notifications. I’m convinced this is a new thing, only had them for the debit card previously.
They’ve been there for credit cards for a while.
Have they tidied up the notifications now or is it solely coincidence the length of merchant makes it look tidy?
Coincidence. At least these ones are all capitals.
I just sent £1 from monzo to hsbc and it seems to have removed all the weird spacing it had previously which is good.
A small tangent, not meaning to derail the topic here, but…
When in Greece, it’s highly recommended to steer clear of Starbucks and BK, and try local coffee and food. It’s significantly cheaper, and arguably better quality and taste
Source: I’m from there.
Declaration of bias: I’m from there.
Now, to re-rail the conversation…
What exactly happened? Would the HSBC card be rejected by the POS machine? Both contactless and chip&pin?
Did Apple pay and/or the different card work straight away? (and would that indicate there is a problem with the manufacture quality of the HSBC card?)
When I opened my Premier account in Feb I only had the credit card notifications for the first 7 days!
I had to call HSBC InvestDirect yesterday and they were superb. Answered very quickly and were very polite without being over the top and sorted things out in less than 5 minutes.
The InvestDirect interface might be questionable but the support is excellent
I completely agree! We were at the airport waiting to fly home so my options were limited. Locals got our custom for the rest of the week. And the coffee was so much better locally.
In the supermarket the terminal rejected it contactless, and “crashed” when attempting chip and pin. Correctly or not the attendant told us that VISA didn’t work in Greece and we would have problems.
In the restaurant it just wouldn’t go through both contactless and chip and pin. I confirmed with HSBC afterwards they didn’t even have sight of the transaction at all so it must have been getting blocked somewhere.
When I tried it in the same restaurant two days later it worked just fine on Apple Pay
Anything is better than Starbucks and BK. And Greggs sorry not sorry.
Unless it’s a very recent thing, that’s beyond ridiculous. I don’t really like HSBC’s bare app UI, but now I’m intrigued to stick some Euros in my Global Money account and try it in a few places this summer!
Costa and McDonald’s
I’m in full agreement re Starbucks.
I do prefer the chicken burger (and fries) from BK to those from KFC (I could be weird, though).
Just found out that even if you set your statement preferences to paperless, you’ll still get sent a paper statement if you don’t log on to online banking for 90 days. That’s the full website version, the app doesn’t count apparently. So a bit strange as I have no need to do that as I just use the app.
That explains why I’m still getting them! Thank you…
It’s dumb. I too have it turned off but still get them for the premier credit. Urgh