I’m traveling to China (Mainland) and India by the end of next week and looking forward to using 
there.
Based on the feedback about using Monzo in 
I guess I’ll probably just use it to withdraw cash from the airport, but I haven’t seen a post about using it in India yet. Any advice ?
India isn’t yet listed on the Travelling with Monzo page (cc: @Naji) so thanks for creating this thread.
There are a couple of posts related you India that you might like to take a look at:
Cheers!
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Interesting that you’ve not had any luck, whilst I was in India and Nepal for ~2.5 months, I found that my regular NatWest Visa and Revolut Mastercard worked in pretty much every ATM I came across. Didn’t have Monzo at the time, but this surprises me.
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Has anyone had any luck using Monzo in India since the demonetisation last week? Either at ATMs or using it at restaurants etc?
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Just used my card for the first time abroad, bought the most expensive damn cider ever in Dubai airport. Next 3 weeks is Chennai, which after all their money issues with cash recently should be interesting, I’ll try and gather as much info as possible.
Dubai airport was top notch with the card so far as Xchange rate was concerned.
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Hi. I am in India now, in Jaipur. I tried withdrawing from an ATM, but was declined because it used the magnetic strip. And from what I’ve seen all ATMs use magnetic strip here. Can’t comment on paying with the card, as I haven’t used it for that yet. Will update when I get more info.
if you are on iPhone
you can enable the Magnetic strip on the card section of the app - tap right hand corner showing the silhouette and scroll down to ATM
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And if you’re on Android you can use in app chat to ask for it to be enabled.
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Aham. Unfortunately I have Android and I don’t have internet access in the city, just at the hotel. More general info about Delhi/Agra/Jaipur right now: ATM’s with money in them are rare to find and the ones that have money also have huge queues. And also the limit is 2000 rupees per card.
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Has anyone tried this ? I have just applied for the Monzo card and I’m going to Rajasthan . The only other card I have is Amex ?
Hi Cristian
I am off to udaipur, jodhpur and Jaipur and planning on using the Monzo card but it doesn’t sound good ? Do you know if most places take american Express ?thanks!!
Did that work ? I haven’t got the card yet but have you tried that ?
I’ve just returned from India so I’ll add my experience of using the card.
In terms of ATMs you’re probably struggling unless you’re on the IPhone. Most seem to be old school magstripe and as I’m on Android I couldn’t use them. Certainly the ones in Mumbai and Hyderabad anyway.
However, India are going trying to go digital fast and most restaurants/shops have card machines which you can use the card. Make sure you pay in Rupees (take the machine off the waiter if you need to as they did get it wrong sometimes). If you don’t you’ll pay fees and a crappy exchange rate. The rate you get if you pay in rupees is as advertised by Monzo, pretty much exact to the commercial rate.
Finally a word or warning for anyone travelling soon. Demonetisation
is a bit of a nightmare. No ATMs have any cash in them and if they do there’s a big queue and a maximum withdrawal of 2,000 rupees. Take pounds to change as a backup and pay on Monzo where possible.
Cheers,
ed
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enable mag strip on Android too
I didn’t realise you could enable mag stripe on Android. This is all assuming you’re paying for data roaming which you would have to. I was working off wifi so wouldn’t really have been able to work the app to access chat or either enable the mag stripe bit…
So for me it would be a £5 charge for data to withdraw from a mag stripe ATM.
why wouldn’t the chat function work over WiFi?
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What I was suggesting is that most of the time you wouldn’t be able to access wifi when withdrawing money. There’d be no issues if you had WiFi
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I’ve spoken to the support people via the app and they’ve said that you can contact them to have your strip activated for extended periods so you don’t need to use wifi or data out and about. I’m going to India next week for a month. I’m really hoping this card works… I’m a bit nervous now.
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That’s useful 
Since Monzo is still in beta you should always make sure that you always have another way to make payments with you.
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Even if you can get the mag stripe issue sorted without the need for data, you won’t be able to rely on taking significant amounts of cash out of an ATM/bank at the moment. Like I mentioned previously Demonetisation has had a big impact and ATMs tend to have 2000 rupee withdrawal limits if they have cash at all (I’d say 90% of them don’t even have any cash - just my experience though in Mumbai and Hyderabad). Plus banks have queues 20-30 deep most of the time. You can use Monzo in shops/restaurants that have card machines but otherwise best to take some pounds and transfer to rupees at the airport as the backup.
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