🇨🇦 Monzo in Canada [Discussion]

[JediGarry]

Hello all,

I’m off to Toronto, Canada this Christmas and wanted to see if anyone else had been there with their Mondo card and if they ran into any issues? I assume it’s similar to the US but wanted to check.

Loving my Mondo card so far

[RossA (Andrew Ross)]

Sounds like it works perfectly (not that I would expect anything else)!:

Travel report (Canada + USA)

I’ve just got back from three weeks travelling around Canada and the US. I didn’t have a single issue with using my Mondo card anywhere in the Canada - they use chip and pin everywhere and contactless worked too. It seems Canada doesn’t have an upper limit for contactless transactions as the symbol appeared on some supermarket terminals even for $100+ transactions though I only used contactless for smaller payments so I’m not sure if a larger payment would have worked. However - all ATMs I use…

[stakhanov]

I’m just waiting on my card…
I have a trip to Canada [BC] coming up, does anyone have any experience from there?

[samuel (Sam)]

Yep, visited Alberta a few months ago. Worked flawlessly, though only used it a handful of times.

[alexbilbie (Alex)]

I’ve just got back from three weeks travelling around Canada and the US.

I didn’t have a single issue with using my Mondo card anywhere in the Canada - they use chip and pin everywhere and contactless worked too. It seems Canada doesn’t have an upper limit for contactless transactions as the symbol appeared on some supermarket terminals even for $100+ transactions though I only used contactless for smaller payments so I’m not sure if a larger payment would have worked.

However - all ATMs I used (both at banks and on the street) all charged at least CAD$2.50 - $3.50 per transaction which was annoying.

Our brief stop in the US (New York) showed that they still have an insanely screwed up system there. Most street ATMs don’t work because Mondo doesn’t allow for magnetic stripe cash withdrawals and only the major banks (Chase, Bank of America, etc) seem to have ATMs that support chip withdrawals. Again these ATMs charged a few dollars to withdraw cash.

I also had a farcical experience in a small supermarket whereby I used chip and pin (which took about 60 seconds to go through) and then the cashier insisted I signed a receipt as well.

With bars and restaurants there was a mixture of chip+pin payments and magnetic swipe payments which really confuse the Mondo timeline because you’ll see an original transaction (pre-tips) the following day; then you’ll see a second payment (with-tips) a few days later; then you’ll finally see a refund of the first transaction. The Mondo app does have a note about this when you view the original transaction.

Also worth mentioning is that everyone who saw my Mondo card commented on the colour - unlike others on this forum I’ve not actually experienced that in the UK yet.

This was our third trip abroad with Mondo this year where we haven’t taken cash with us and just relied on card transactions and taking money out at ATMs. All in all another great success

[Jake762 (Jacob H Sell)]

Currently travelling round Canada and have used my Monzo card everywhere with no problems. The upper limit for contactless transactions is $100.

[Dawid]

I’m in British Columbia at the moment and also had no problems. Used Monzo card at Toronto Airport (contactless) and in Maple Ridge in various stores using both contactless and the traditional way

[plusman (Martin)]

Used Monzo at Niagra Falls to purchase tickets without any problem.

[Raptor (Ben Taylor)]

I just got back from Toronto and I used my Monzo card all over the city and at Niagara with no problems. The exchange rate was excellent and I loved the Monzo app updating me with the payment confirmation and the currency conversion. The only thing I would say to watch out for is their ATM’s as they all charge about 3CAD. I tried to pay by card rather than taking out cash.

[jo0206 (Jo Hughes)]

Hi off to Canada in August, does anyone know if I will be charged to get cash out of atms? Haven’t used my card yet@

[alexs (Alex Sherwood)]

Hi Jo, I’ve moved your post here to keep all of the advice about Canada in one place. I hope that makes sense

This wiki should contain most of the key info for using Monzo in Canada -

Monzo in Canada [Wiki]

This is a wiki crowdsourced by the Monzo Community to help you travel with Monzo. Just like Wikipedia, anyone can edit it to help out others. If you have any tips or feedback for visiting Canada with Monzo, please feel free to edit this guide. You can also add a comment or question below — someone will then incorporate your comment into the main text below and then delete your comment. To create your own “Monzo in …” guide if one doesn’t already exist, just copy this template into a new post an…

& hopefully the posts in this topic fill in any gaps.

If you do have any more questions though, just ask them here

[CPS (Cathleen Sullivan)]

I tried a number of banks in BC - National Bank did not charge a fee ! HSBC and Bank of Montreal do charge £2 -£3

Making a list of banks that don’t charge in each country would be useful .

[Unknownstarz (Andrew Hoang)]

Used from 19th - 28th Aug in Canada, Ontario (Toronto & Niagara falls/Outlet) Area, had no problems with any purchases. Exchange rate was near to market rate which is amazing. $100 CAD contact less payments.

[crablab (Hugh)]

@alexbilbie

Our brief stop in the US (New York) showed that they still have an insanely screwed up system there. Most street ATMs don’t work because Mondo doesn’t allow for magnetic stripe cash withdrawals and only the major banks (Chase, Bank of America, etc) seem to have ATMs that support chip withdrawals. Again these ATMs charged a few dollars to withdraw cash.

It does

You have to manually enable Magstripe transactions in app (for 24 hours). Turned off by default for fraud prevention.

[alexbilbie (Alex)]

@crablab

It does

You have to manually enable Magstripe transactions in app (for 24 hours). Turned off by default for fraud prevention.

Back in August 2016 there wasn’t that option

[crablab (Hugh)]

Oh really? Sorry!

[Whytey (Lee Parker)]

Travelling to Niagra, Toronto, Calgary, Jasper, Banff, Kamloops, Whistler and Vancouver so Im happy to see people have used it with no problems.

Monzo is perfect for me, As preload cards usually means locking in a exchange rate for “one” country. Im heading to the US after Canada and the mastercard rates for Monzo are awesome

[mbell (Maisie Bell)]

Travelling to ON next week, reading this thread has set my expectations high

I’m also travelling with the current account preview, so I’ll be sure to report back if it works just as well as the prepaid card does (no reason why it shouldn’t!).

Safe travels folks

[anon95680666]

previously mentioned above by @alexbilbie

“With bars and restaurants there was a mixture of chip+pin payments and magnetic swipe payments which really confuse the Mondo timeline because you’ll see an original transaction (pre-tips) the following day; then you’ll see a second payment (with-tips) a few days later; then you’ll finally see a refund of the first transaction. The Mondo app does have a note about this when you view the original transaction.”

• Current Account - ‘Mag stripe ATMs are not currently supported’ - so presumably a problem in some bars and restaurants as well that only have magstripe POS terminals ???

[Audreyb (Audrey Blyth)]

As a slightly older traveller not used to modern concepts such as prepaid cards I decided to try monzo instead of carrying cash, I know a stupid thing to carry cash.
However once I received my card the whole process of setting could not have been simpler.
With that I topped up and headed of to Canada/Alaska still feeling nervous with this strange concept of no hard cash.
Well I must admit how wrong was I to think I would be cashless… All the thoughts of not being able to pay for things swiftly left my mind, I loved how I had instant notifications of transactions on my phone, exchange rate was good. I used the 3 options of tap, chip and pin and atm withdrawal ( 3$ fee) but hey not a problem. No declines what so ever, even in Alaska.
Hubby was so impressed he will now apply for a card!!!
Great service guys at monzo.