More than half the ATMs in Indonesia donāt support the magsafe security of Monzo and it isnāt possible to use them. It isnāt only specific banks, it depends on the ATM itself.
On many shops and restaurants they will charge you extra to pay by card, a 3% is very common. It was quite annoying, every time I wanted to pay by card I wouldnāt be able to.
I wasnāt able to use it online for any Indonesian online retailers or apps, since they didnāt pass the verification of purchase and it was cancelled each time. Not possible to use it in Lazada, for last minute bookings in the airline company (I ended up having to pay with cash in the airport!!)ā¦
It was easy enough to find ATMs which worked, and the ones in the banks instead of the small ones out of the bank worked normally better.
I am hearing people advising taking hard cash and getting better exchange rates over in Bali rather than using cards, what do people think? Or have experience of? I am on honeymoon for 15 days and not sure what to do! Thanks
maybe you had reached your daily / monthly / yearly transaction limits ? - you can find this under account in the settings menu - it will give you a definitive answer to what your withdrawal limits are
I do remember a couple of years ago when I was on a prepaid Monzo card there was a Ā£1000 transaction limit under the spending information in the app and I had to make two transactions one after the other to pay a hotel bill which went through without problems
Best bet is to use BCA as they are slowly changing their atms to chip and pin, you can tell if they are newer atms by if they have rolling LED text above the atm and they have worked perfectly while i have been in bali.
Used in Batam, Indonesia over the weekend. Cash withdrawals can be done through the BNI ATMs (Tried BNI, Mandiri, BRI), but do enable your magnetic stripes through the app before doing so.
In Jakarta Iāve not had issues. Strangely some larger stores have multiple card machines as each card machine is linked to a different bank, so there may be different fees for the merchant if they use the same merchant acquirer/processor as the card issuer bankā¦ So if Monzo doesnāt work in one payment device it may work in another one (they tend to try more than one)ā¦
Donāt know if this relates but the guys in the hotel told me the new card machines donāt like Monzo but the old ones work fine. He was saying the card fails but still takes the money which we did experience in mainland.
Hi, I want to support what @Bradley1 has said above.
I was on he island of Gili T in the last few days trying to use my Monzo card and multiple places wouldnāt accept the card:
The first place, Banyan Tree, told me they were having issues and the card would just get declined (without letting me try) so I tried to ask more questions but they couldnāt give me an answer.
The Italian job restaurant was similar and they said they also had problems with the card and it also wouldnāt work.
Blue Marlin Dive centre were the only ones who were a little more honest and told me they would not accept Monzo because of the business rates they are charged when using Mandarin card readers and the card. These other restaurants were also using Mandarin card readers. I tried to ask more questions and find out more detail but without much success.
Funnily enough I have had no problem on main Bali island .
Not sure if the reason Blue Marlin gave me was correct, but certainly less and less places are willing to accept Monzo cards. I had no issue when I paid with another so seems like an isolated Monzo issue.
Thought it would definitely be something Monzo would be concerned about if Mandarin card readers are in wide usage, which they are.
Also just been to Gili T and Sanur and had the same issue at three restaurants now. It seems to be the yellow (unsure of the bank) card readers. The money seems to be debited from my Monzo account (connected to WiFi) before the card machine is able to finalise the payment.
If any payment fails Monzo have suggested you get written proof that the payment wasnāt completed, not that easy when their English is understandably limited.
Currently in the process of trying to get my money backā¦
Thanks for sharing that. On Gili Trawangan now, and a merchant just told me he didnāt accept Monzo as heās had quite a few declines. I took this to mean that people hadnāt had sufficient funds in their account, but your explanation seems rather more believable.
He was also not the first merchant to ask me whether Iād consider paying with a different card. It does seem like Monzo is getting a poor reputation here. I wonder whether anything could be done to remediate that.
I think it was one of the yellow card readers that others have mentioned, but the payment did go through.
Iām going to Bali in a few months, and was wondering if anyone has had experiences of using Monzo in Bali more recently they can share?
Iāve had a read through this thread but this latest post is from 2019!
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