Hey all,
Just got my card, main reason I decided to try it out is my travels in Ghana and Togo for a month coming up soon. I don’t know if anyone has reported trying Monzo in either country but I will report back during my trip! Heard there are major issues with Mastercard in Togo so I may have to either get money out with my Barclays visa or get it out in Ghana and get it exchanged, whatever seems cheapest
It looks like you could potentially be the first!
It would be awesome if on your return you could help the community build wikis for both of these countries. Your experience will be invaluable.
There are some posts here from Africa which may be useful to you.
Cheers!
Soon as I have experience in either country I’ll help with the rapports for sure!
I’ve been in Ghana for fieldwork the past 2 months and thought I’d share my experience with Monzo so far for future travellers.
So far it’s been accepted every time I’ve used it at atms with a Mastercard sign, apart from once when an atm ate it. When that happened I froze the card and went to the bank whose atm it was and was able to collect my card the next day. Only slight issue was that as I’m still on the prepaid card it didn’t have my name on it, but was able to convince them it was mine by showing them there picture of the card in the app. This will be redundant I assume if using the current account card.
ATM wise I’ve made 6 withdrawls, including with GCB, Barclays and Stanbic bank. Most withdrawls incur an 8 cedi charge and atm withdrawl limits have ranged from 200 to 1500 cedis to no pattern I can make out. At one atm I was declined due to not turning magstripe on, but it worked after I enabled that.
In Accra I’ve used the card for purchases where available with no issue. But most of my time and money has been spent in rural areas where everything’s done in cash.
It’s been great using Monzo here, I love getting instant notifications of withdrawls and purchases and being able to freeze my card when an atm ate it. And so far having no cash withdrawl charges has been great but am aware of the change to this.
Hope this helps and will update this if I have any issues whilst I’m here 
Hi,
I will like to ask for more information on your trip. Specifically in Togo. How was your experience like?
Hi! From my visit there a year ago, in the end I only used it a couple of times as I got the cash out I needed at the start of my trip. I had read that using mastercard would be an issue in Togo but I used it at banque Atlantique in Lomé no problem at all, although I did have to use my barclays visa at the hotel I was in. I think the coverage in Lomé is better than most think, although overall visa is still probably more accepted elsewhere in the country than mastercard. Hope this helps!
Thank you so much for the quick reply. Apart from Banque Antlantique, any other banks you tried it with? Ecobank. Were there any charges per transaction? Thank you
Didn’t try an ecobank in Togo unfortunately but if I remember the ecobank was fine for me in Ghana. I don’t think I got any charges, just make sure you select CFA instead of GBP when it comes up on the screen so that it’s monzo that handle the charges so that there aren’t any! Some banks in West Africa did make an obligatory charge though regardless but don’t remember Atlantique doing that
Thank you very much
Thank you so much for this information, Luke. I may travel to Ghana this year so this update is quite helpful