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 