Monzo froze my account

Monzo Chat
1

I just thought i would bring this to the community as this happened to me this morning and i have just had a phone call with a really lovely guy at Monzo who has cleared everything up at first.

I got a in app message saying my cards frozen and i need to order a new one due to suspicious activity. At first my defence gates flew up (I had a big issue with this 2 years ago where my account was frozen 4 times in the space of 3 months). Monzo admitted this was a system issue and said it will be fixed and this was put in the past.

I immidiately replied but got no response, so i phoned up after the second call got told that today there was lots of suspicious active card checks on loads of accounts and Monzo have froze affected accounts to protect customers. They have passed on to the premium team to order me a new card as i have premium and would have to pay in the app if i replaced the card myself.

Just a heads up if this happens to you :slight_smile:

9 Likes
2

Sounds like a good thing then. Iā€™ve no issues with them being proactive and protecting my money :slight_smile:

2 Likes
3

Yeah, they could of been clearer with the automated message but completely agree. Thought it was an account closure message at first :sweat_smile:

2 Likes
4

Iā€™ve had my card frozen today as wellā€¦

From a transaction at ā€œFitviaā€?

5

Monzo just replied to me saying they have unfrozen my card and that i was not affected :eyes:
Do you recognise the transaction Fitvia or never heard of them?

6

Something to do with healthy teas apparently (from a google search).

7

Never heard of them. Company in Germany apparently :man_shrugging:t4:

8

Could be they was used as a merchent by fraudsters testing card number generators maybe šŸ¤·

9

Protecting their own money, tbf.

4 Likes
10

I always keep my card frozen to be fair as a just in case. Either way though youā€™re covered at least for fraud, I just canā€™t be bothered with the hassle

11

Mastercard would be on the hook for widespread fraud like that AFAIK.

So this is just proactively protecting customers from a potentially stressful event (at a cost to Monzo - replacing cards before fraud has actually occurred).

Much the opposite of protecting their own money, really.

2 Likes
12

Monzo should issue premium cards with no card number on the physical card. That way the card number can be changed in the app. Imagine the amount of premium cards being replaced now :eyes:

4 Likes
13

Pure speculation as to how many if any need replacing though.

14

Would definitely be a neat feature to have the card number in-app only to prevent replacements for this reason, regardless of the scale wouldnā€™t you agree?

2 Likes
15

Isnā€™t that just the use case of a virtual card? :joy: which you get with plus and premiumā€¦

16

No not really. Virtual cards are for using online. Not printing a card number reduces replacements and increases security :rofl:

17

Anyone know if we can freeze the card, but still pay via Google Pay?

Found a discussion in 2019 where it could be voted on, though cannot find definitive answer.

My Starling app allows me to do this through granular controls. Not so sure Monzo does :thinking:

They are not alone in that though.

Amex states a ā€œfreezeā€ still allows payments via a ā€œdigital walletā€, so sounds like that would still work.

2 Likes
18

For what itā€™s worth, I just tried with Apple Pay and it doesnā€™t work. (Granted itā€™s not Google Pay though, but this is the behaviour with Appleā€™s counterpart)

The moment I froze the card, a notification from Apple Pay popped up saying ā€œ[blah bla] cannot be used with Apple Pay, contact card issuer for more informationā€.

2 Likes
19

This is how Google Pay behaves when frozen:

Screenshot_20210329-205043_Google Play services
Screenshot_20210329-205043_Google Play services1440Ɨ1683 104 KB

3 Likes
20

Ah, never thought of looking at my Google Pay :man_facepalming:

Thatā€™s how my HyperJar card looks as always frozen.

Thanks both.