šŸ‡©šŸ‡Ŗ Monzo in Germany [Discussion]

Monzo worked perfectly at Dusseldorf Airport. Didnā€™t leave the airport, it was just for a connecting flight.

My wife and I had a great extended break in Berlin and I used the :monzo: card almost exclusively. One machine which didnā€™t accept the card - although I think that was a problem with the machine.

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And we see it did :slight_smile:

In Munich
Monzo card worked everywhere so far, much to the displeasure of my amigos.
Watching me do immediate transactions for free, was more than enough to sell it to them
You now have three new customers signing up

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I was in Munich a few days ago and when trying to purchase tickets from the ticket booths at the Munich Central station, the card was seen to be "invalidā€™.

Was close to a mini heart attack at 3:45 am trying to get to the airport!! :sweat:

The rest of the trip the card worked perfectly though :slight_smile:

Some ticket machines in Germany will only take Maestro

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This is exactly it. I did find some workarounds in Frankfurt though.

Hey guys and gals,

Been in Germany a month now and Iā€™ve encountered a few issues, nothing major thatā€™s caught me out but just thought Iā€™d report a few things.

As has been said, the card doesnā€™t work in a few of the transport ticket machines Iā€™ve tried in Berlin, Hamburg and Liepzig.

Also something that has been mentioned as well is that there are still shops that only accept local cards electronic cards and not MasterCard. This is a more prevalent problem than has been stated here. Anywhere outside of the cities in small shops and restaurants itā€™s always good to keep cash on hand just in case. This has mostly affected me in Liepzig and Hamburg.

As a travel tip, everywhere in Berlin wants you to pay in cash. Itā€™s just a cultural thing.

Happy trails.

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Hi All,

Iā€™m out in Berlin for work at the moment. Monzo works great in Aldi / Lidl, bars (that take card) and Euronet ATMs. With the awesomeness of the decent exchange rate, itā€™s a hassle free travel experience.

However, Iā€™ve run into a bit of an edge case:

After a few too many Berliner Lufts I used a pretty sketchy looking ATM at a spƤti and my Monzo card got cloned :frowning: After noticing some dude in Bali (nice place for it) trying to withdraw cash, I froze my card, got in touch with Monzo and they sent me a new one.

Problem is, I think you have to change the PIN from the one Monzo sends you via text in order to activate the card?

I cannot for the life of me find an ATM in Berlin that offers a PIN change service? Does anyone know where one is?

Cheers

I may be wrong but it used to be that pin change was on domestic networks only and not accessible when outside the country of issue due to the interconnectivity specs not covering this functionality. If this has changed since then it would be good to know. Please let us know if you manage to find an ATM where you can successfully change it

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Used Monzo is Berlin over the last two days - worked fine for chip/pin transactions.

Just got back from a couple days in Berlin. Didnā€™t have any issues with Monzo specifically but few places do accept cards in general.

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Berlin is increasing its credit card acceptance, REWE groceries even do ā€œcash backā€ after doing a larger than 20EUR purchase (I"m a Berliner, and i was shocked on a recent visit, as Cash Back was unheard of in the past), I was also able to do Apple Pay in REWE Grocery Stores, to the amazement of the Staff, the REWE stores are all over the City https://marktsuche.rewe.de/standort/berlin-berlin/

adding also Penny-Marktā€™s, which also do Cash Back now, at no fees starting at 20EUR purchases:
https://www.rewe-group.com/de/newsroom/pressemitteilungen/1439/
Lots of Penny markts around in Berlin, and REWEs, both of which run late hours of operation.

One thing i think Monzo might consider is a bit more clarity on the exchange rate and charges, i was getting 1.14 to the pound this week, although it was unclear what the actual Mastercard rate was to the EUR,

anyways, works greatā€¦

ex-Berliner-in-London

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You could hop over to Poland, they have PIN services.
In Germany only some banks allow PIN change at their ATMs for their own cards.

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I tried at Sparkasse in Berlin last week, it did not work, and subsequently went back to my original PIN.
Itā€™s a bit of ride from Berlin to Poland, Iā€™ll try the more modern Cash Points at Deutsche Bank, and also PostBank (which is owned by Deutsche Bank actually, for anyone not from Germany and not familiar, the Postal Bank and DB are basically one and the same)

ex-Berliner-in-London

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try all you want, PIN services are NOT available in Germany, like I mentioned.
I did the train trip to Poland to have lunch and change my PIN, but just for the PIN of course a bit much.

This is why I would love for Monzo to support changing the PIN in the app too and just make a big fat disclaimer to withdraw money after that (of course an online PIN payment would suffice, but too confusing for people and UK/France and other countries are predominantly offline PIN countries), to write the new PIN on the card.

I found it worked great in Berlin, but bear in mind very few places accept card at all. I had to use cash for almost everything.

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Thanks James. Quite familiar with Berlin, but still advantageous to take my euros out of an ATM at MC exchange rates (one sig. reason I like Mondo!). 'specially given my euros are now worth so much less.

As an aside, are you going to be looking at having Mondo able to ā€˜storeā€™ money in multiple currencies (therefore a user could store euros and pounds separately, and make the most of the conversion during crashes like these)? Iā€™m guessing this contravenes some banking regulation or other, just a thought.

Iā€™ll give feedback on Prague/Greece when Iā€™m back.

Mondo has expressed that they believe you shouldnā€™t have to think about managing the currencies/FX/etc.

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I got back from Berlin last week and both my boyfriend and Iā€™s Mondo cards worked perfectly in every shop and restaurant we used them in. We didnā€™t try the ATMs though as we took some Euros with us.

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