With ALL UK banks?
Obviously not for ALL banks but the ones the majority of people use.
Barclays, RBS, NatWest, HSBC, LBG, Nationwide etc.
But again it’s the regular post so it can take a week or two to arrive. The use case is different though because it’s generally for people who live abroad, not for emergencies when people are on holiday.
With the volume of cards you dispatch, Monzo should have its own contacts with the shipping companies - especially as the cards come from different sites/firms
Otherwise, you are losing out on economics of scale and paying whatever the card companies charge you for delivery including their own mark-up.
I know Monzo wants to make money, but just as important is properly controlling your costs - its a lesson many startups fail to learn early enough.
You keep beating this drum, but you have already said you don’t have experience of commercial agreements with card manufactures. I’m sure Monzo are on top of it. I think they understand how economies of scale work.
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I have a lot of commercial experience and know how deliveries and commercial agreements work. The fact that it’s cards is frankly immaterial.
Especially since at least one of the firm’s I’ve been involved is one of the largest players in making bank cards (but not only them)
Speaking from my experience on the front line, the majority of cards I’ve sent out internationally are to people on holiday and/or travelling. So these are usually temporary addresses and as @anon41219820 pointed out above, because people don’t always provide us with an accurate address or move on before the card has arrived we end up sending them more than one replacement.
I’d just love to see a table of all the major banks charges, in one place. On the MoneyAdviceService website you can see some banks charge for more than one replacement card a year, some for more than two, some not at all.
I’d just love to see some transparency across the whole field here.
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0.48% of card replacements are international. We aren’t talking huge volumes, but we are talking big costs (21% of all card replacements).
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Monzo should give the consumer the choice between the courier service (which should be charged) and something more reasonably priced such as Royal Mail’s International Standard (which Monzo should absorb the costs of), IMO.
I can understand there are emergency situations where you need a new card ASAP and you’re willing to pay £30 to achieve that, but I always ensure I have more than one backup payment method if I’m going abroad and would be happy to wait longer.
I’d also like to see a clear policy covering when this replacement fee will be charged, and when it will be waived. Obviously there should be some discretion, but I think I’d be disappointed if it wasn’t waived in cases of theft, for example.
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Out of interest, do card replacements specifically mean a user-requested card replacement? Or would that include things like the card expiring and brand new cards to new users?
What does that card replacement figure look like in actual numbers?
Never found a bank actually willing to deliver a replacement abroad so not sure what the situ is. What exactly does that £60 cover?
I can think of huge regions where the odds of anything turning up within ten working days are greater than 2/1.
To add to my previous post - when I said it’s free for banks to dispatch your card internationally I meant when your permanent/normal residential address is in another country.
I’m not aware of any banks issuing replacement cards overseas when people are on holiday or otherwise temporarily out of the country (except for Monzo and Starling of course) so Monzo is winning this for sure even with the reasonable charge.
Also - at £30 Monzo should be making a significant profit for offering this service. I think the charge is reasonable, as I have said, but if this is close to actual cost then it should be rethought because it shouldn’t cost anywhere near this amount for courier delivery. Monzo is supposed to be earning a profit, after all it is a business.
Presumably you don’t pay the £30 if it never turns up though or is very late?
Yes - but Monzo should still be paying no where close to list prices for deliveries - UK or international.
I’m not opposed to them making a profit on the service - just concerned if thats their break even price for overseas deliveries then they need to start taking the shipping contracts in-house and not relying on the card companies to hold the contracts instead
It is really simple.
- They don’t make a profit
- The card manufacturers set the cost
- What couriers charge, list or otherwise, is irrelevant
- Don’t lose your card abroad then it is all irrelevant
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Internationally - yes.
Your registered Monzo address must be a UK address, so any expired cards etc would be sent to that address.
I’m also not sure we’ve reached the point where we’d have any cards that would have expired. I found my prepaid card the other day and that only expired last month!
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This doesn’t apply to us - the address on your account must be a UK address.
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If it only accounts for 0.48% of their card replacements, I doubt they even get that much leverage in negotiating costs with the card manufacturer.
It’s even highly likely that if they did take it in house, it could actually cost more to deliver;
They’d have to get cards shipped directly to Monzo (in some secure fashion)
Someone at Monzo would have to receive, process, administer them and prepare them for onward shipping.
And Monzo wouldn’t get the economies of scale that their manufacturer does (and in all likelihood that wouldn’t bring the cost that much below off the shelf prices).
I suspect as well their card manufacturer has to handle these cards in a different way, so not only is that £30 covering the cost of shipping, but also the added process complexity at their end too.
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I’m still really confused how they make the promise of delivering cards to all the countries where a postal system barely exists and international couriers are completely unheard of.
That has always been my concern when travelling medium term.
I wasn’t aware such countries existed where you’d also expect to use a debit card.
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You don’t pay with debit card. You use an ATM. It’s a lot of the world.