Hi All,
I’m still waiting patiently in the queue :3 but I’ve been reading up on things and I see one issue.
I’m flying to Cambodia/Vietnam for 3-4 weeks with my parents sometime this year. I’m organising this and I will be in charge of any cash, because I speak English, my parents do not (they speak German and Russian instead, but I highly doubt it will be very useful in Cam/Viet).
TL;DR, I’m going to keep my own and my parents money, maybe excluding some ICE reserves in socks that my parents will keep ;-).
Problem: monthly ATM withdrawal limit is £1000.
Surely, we’ll pay for some stuffs directly with card, although it’s not my preferred option at all.
I’d rather pay with cash whenever I can without taking card out of my wallet. This means higher ATM withdrawals and for 3 people, I expect to exceed £1000 limit.
Ha Long bay trip is about $140 per person, so x3 and in GBP, that’s £346… so that trip alone is a third of monthly limit. Angkor Wat admission fee is 3x $40 (or more, they are thinking about price increase), so another £100.
Even if I thought about my own expenditures (excluding flights, but pretty much everything else), for 4 week trip, I’d be afraid I might exceed ATM withdrawal limit.
Any tips? Anything I’m missing?
Tbh, annual ATM withdrawal limit is not the biggest either, I’m assuming this includes UK ATM withdrawals as well?
Parents can’t have their own Monzo, because they are not UK residents.
I think you’re stuck with the £1,000 limit for now. That limit’s there to reduce fraud & Monzo isn’t intended to be primarily used for ATM withdrawals.
Out of interest, what makes you want to use cash rather than card? There’s several benefits for just making card payments -
Your money can’t be stolen, if you card is, you can freeze it from the app
You can track your spending (& receive a spending report at the end of the trip)
You’ll be able to top up your card at any time from your UK bank account
I expect I’m missing a couple of points but you get the idea
Note: edits, in bold & strikethrough, made following Naji’s comments below.
I don’t plan to carry all cash with me, I just intend to use card to gradually withdraw pocket money from ATMs. ATMs, especially in Cambodia, have fairly low withdrawals limits anyway. On top of that, I will convert my monies to local currency, as it’s cheaper to pay in VND/KHR.
I plan to use ATM every 2-3 days, I don’t plan to have more than $150ish dollars in my wallet at all times, excluding when I need to pay for trips.
Not all hotels we plan to stay seem to be tourist-y enough to offer payments by card (I might be wrong about that, but if something doesn’t exist on booking.com and have FB page only… it most likely can’t accept card!).
Places we plan to eat, definitely won’t offer card payments.
Do you have an idea when you will travel this year? The monthly withdrawal limits are currently set by one of our partners which is why they are rigidly set. Once we launch as a bank, the plan is to begin using our own payments system, at which stage we can be a more flexible with limits. I expect we would revisit this over the summer
Hi Naji,
It’s going to be Dec 2017/Jan 2018, thanks for your info, I will observe limits carefully.
Don’t get me wrong, Monzo is ideal for any shorter trip or where 1 user wouldn’t actually pay for expenses of three people. Even if limits are not higher, I’ll be gladly using Monzo at any other time, just that particular trip is really eee, special.
I travelled in Vietnam last year. The Halong Bay trip is expensive (but worth it). I stayed in a mid range guesthouse in Hanoi and asked them to get me a quote for a Halong Bay trip. It was cheaper than I saw advertised elsewhere but turned out to be a great trip. The guesthouse was happy to book it for me and I added the cost to my bill and was able to pay with a credit card. I imagine this is fairly standard. Most touristy restaurants took credit cards even for fairly small amounts. Enjoy Vietnam - it’s a fantastic place.
I’m expecting it to be great, true. Thing is, Ha Long is just one of many payments on the way, I gave it as example to prove how easily £1k monthly ATM limit can be reached. While I can find Ha Long bay trip that allows to pay with card, I will have many others where it won’t be possible. For example, Rabbit Island (near Kep) or Bamboo train thing in Battambang. We plan Mekong river trip in a non-tourist boat (read: hire fisherman). Many of them are small payments, but they all add up.
However, it’s all futile because I base my assumptions on current restrictions. Once restrictions are lifted and monthly limit revised - I’ll know if Monzo is fully usable, or should be the backup card.
Thank you all who replied to my question! This is defo not a salty community.
