Up front disclaimer: I’m not working on this but I do work on our physical cards and the backend of producing and sending card orders to our suppliers.
A couple of points here from me:
- The discounts are not quite as good as y’all seem to think.
- Our suppliers are continually surprised at the countries we send cards to and the number of international card orders we have. It is not normal for a UK bank to provide this kind of service at this frequency to all customers.
- It’s an extremely manual process compared to normal card orders. There are more costs than just the raw courier cost.
- We send a lot of cards internationally that never get activated and a lot where people don’t actually need them.
- We provide this particular tier of courier service on the basis that if you are in a position where you need a Monzo card sent internationally, you likely need that card as soon as possible and cannot wait for the multiple weeks that the cheaper air mail may take (we used air mail in the prepaid days and it took far too long to be useful to the vast majority of people who needed it).
I know this sounds harsh but it’s an extremely expensive service to us (I can’t disclose the exact contents of business deals) that some people use more than their fair share of. We have the choice of charging for this specific service, or introducing charges elsewhere to cover these costs.
I may not personally fully agree with some of the implementation details (and it’s totally fair to comment on that!) but it’s hard to get away from the reality of the situation with just how much international card deliveries is costing.
Our very first current account debit cards begin expiring soon. 