Was in an Apple Store today buying a new Apple watch. When I pulled out my phone to pay I had to change cards as Monzo is the default but this time I wanted to pay from my RBS account. When the assistant saw the card he said it would likely be declined. He was correct.
I swtiched cards and when he saw the Monzo card I was expecting him to ask what it was, but no, he said “Oh, Monzo”, that will be no problem. Correct again.
So the bank that has known me for nearly 50 years couldn’t figure out that this was a valid transaction but the bank who have known me for about three months could, desptie the fact that this was my first high value Apple store transaction with them. I’ve make plenty with RBS.
Well done Monzo.
Of course declining the transaction was not to protect me as they later claimed. We are all already protected unless negligence can be proved. It is, of course, to protect them.
I’ve found in the past before my Monzo days that Lloyd’s Banking Group banks would routinely decline high value transactions, and then when contacting them they’d say things like “it may have been because you haven’t used your card on that app/device before” - even though I had used it numerous times in the past.
It always seemed to happen at really inconvenient moments as well e.g. trying to get a pre-order in before shipping times slipped!
With regards to RBS, one of my friends who banks with them suffers declined transactions almost every single time he orders with Apple online, and has to switch to using a credit card instead.
I’ve had higher value transactions authorised. It’s impossible to predict but the Apple store must see plenty for that comment to be made. I was more annoyed at being told it was “for my protection”, a blatant lie.
My Lloyds TSB amount used to be declined a lot for expensive transactions (actually, mostly in the Apple store thinking about it!). They said because it was my day to day spending account, my average transaction was really small, so something like a new Mac set off red flags.
I even once tried calling right before paying for something, but they said they couldn’t do anything other than have me call them if it got declined so they could approve it and have me try again. They used to be good at calling you as soon as you got a decline so they could sort it out quickly.
Seems like a different era compared to being a Monzo user.
But I wonder if it’s more about risk appetite than anything? Established legacy banks put in tighter controls around what is an ‘extraordinary’ spend for good reasons (fraud). I wonder if Monzo is a bit smarter around WHERE you are spending (most purchases in an Apple store will be £100+ if not higher on average)?
I once had Nationwide block an online purchase for my new MacBook with Apple… they had a habit of doing that.
I haven’t made any large purchases with Monzo, but used my Amex to spend >£1000 in an Apple Store recently, and it was approved (though they did call me a couple of hours later for confirmation).