🇳🇴 Monzo in Norway [Discussion]

[SeanP (Sean Pearce)]

Ill be travelling to Norway next week and taking my Monzo card, as will a colleague.
Norway is fast becoming a cashless society, and are a national of heavy card users. I’ve not taken cash with me for at least 5 years, and used cards to pay for everything including a single chocolate bar!
Will try to use Monzo in all sorts of circumstances and report back findings.

[Jkb114 (Josh Bray)]

Remember to take another card and some cash as s backup. Monzo is still a beta after all. Enjoy the trip though

[SeanP (Sean Pearce)]

Thanks Josh. Always bring other cards, but will try Monzo first. Not taken cash to Norway for last 5 years. They are truly moving towards being a cashless society!

[Jkb114 (Josh Bray)]

Sounds like my sort of place. I hate cash and change. Much prefer using electronic payment. Quicker easier and safer.

[SeanP (Sean Pearce)]

Well, the trip to Norway was pretty uneventful, in terms of any issues or challenges for Monzo… I used Monzo exclusively and it worked in:

1. Flytoget airport train both directions - including adding as a card on the website for e-Receipt.
2. Taxis in Bergen and Fornebu, Oslo
3. Topping up internal Canteen paycard
4. Bars, restaurants & hotels.
5. Included was an initial top-up before I left UK, and an ~“in-situ” emergency top-up prior to paying for a colleague’s meal, who’s own CC had ironically been declined.

Alll my flights and hotels were pre-paid on other cards before leaving, so not chance for a really high value transaction - largest was about 550 NOK (£55ish).

Unfortunately Norway is not yet fully established with Contactless terminals, so very few, if any, contactless were performed.

What I forgot to do was try the contactless chocolate machine in the offices, and also try a purchase on any flights (meals & coffees were complimentary which is unusual in this day & age, even for budget flights!),

It was nice to see the authorisations appearing instantaneously and being marked as “to be cleared later” etc.

I think showing the PEM (contact, contactless) symbol on purchases would be nice.

As these are all work expenses - I still want to “Flag” them as an Expense, but keep the original category (food, transport etc.) for ease of reporting.

I tagged each with the receipts… Would be ideal to interface to the likes of Expesify and upload them straight off.

–
Sean

[alexs (Alex Sherwood)]

Great feedback! I’m sure the extra detail will be really useful for other Monzo users.

If anyone wants to comment on this suggestion -

@SeanP

I think showing the PEM (contact, contactless) symbol on purchases would be nice.

please carry on this conversation -

Identifying Contactless Transactions

I would really like to see a small feature introduced where I can see which of my transactions were contactless. I think this would help with money management, as it makes recalling a transaction easier and (possibly) assists with identifying fraudulent activity. I imagine this could be introduced using the contactless logo alongside the transaction amount, either in the main feed or the transaction overview page. Any thoughts?

or this suggestion -

@SeanP

As these are all work expenses - I still want to “Flag” them as an Expense, but keep the original category (food, transport etc.) for ease of reporting.

here -

Company expenses

Not sure if this is something you already do but I have to provide print outs of receipts for my company expenses. It’d be great if a) I could flag transactions as expenses and b) export them maybe as a pdf to print?

& lastly, this suggestion

@SeanP

I tagged each with the receipts… Would be ideal to interface to the likes of Expesify and upload them straight off.

here -

Export receipts

I sent this request via the app earlier today but thought I would add it here as a central repository. Having the ability to filter (by month/quarter etc.) receipts which can be emailed to my accountant would be awesome. Maybe by category too such as expenses. Maybe even a send to Xero/sage option. So much potential - very excited about my banking future!

[anon44204028]

Yep, agree with identifying contactless transactions, ePOS, etc with different icons or symbols

[alexs (Alex Sherwood)]

:facepalm: your vote for that feature is going to be lost in this thread, which is about travelling with Monzo in Norway, see my previous comment.

[anon44204028]

Already commented in the other thread

[lj51 (Laura Johnston)]

I’m going to Norway in January for 3 months; I’ve just signed up for Monzo as it sounds like it’ll be useful with no exchange fees. Hoping my card will get here in time though. Thanks for this post

[anon95680666]

if you don’t get your card top up invite within 2 weeks from sign up you need to be emailing help@Monzo.com or getting in touch with twitter account @monzo- It is usually about 2 days after paying your initial top up amount that you get your card - it does sometimes slip through the net though - so get in touch if you’re outside these rough timescales

[thejayo (Jay)]

I’ve just come back from a long weekend in Oslo and only used my Monzo card and a bit of cash that I took as a backup and didn’t want to bring home with me.

I used the card for pretty much anything - coffee , supermarkets, airport, restaurants shops, even the Reuter app to buy tickets for public transport all worked fine. The Reuter app seemed to take a long time to accept the payment, but that may have been the app. I used both contactless and chip&pin without any problems.

Funnily, my ‘mainstream’ bank card got blocked while I was over there because I tried paying a large amount of money through PayPal (unrelated to me being abroad).
Glad I had my :mondo: to rely on!

[waXology]

Just adding my two cents to update you all.

Three of us went to Norway this past June. All of us had Monzo. Were there for 10 days on a roadtrip. So we went everywhere from Bergen to the middle of absolutely nowhere! We used Monzo for the whole trip. Not once did weekend to take out cash or need coin.

Absolutely brilliant!

[SeanP (Sean Pearce)]

I’ve been back to Norway too - in June, and once again can report good usage of Monzo - and no cash required.

[Pramit]

Just come back from a trip to Norway and used the Monzo card without any problems. They do not use contactless but the chip and pin worked perfectly.

Also, got a good exchange rate!

[shamil]

Many places use Contactless, but uptake is sluggish as the Visa/Mastercard equivalent charges for contactless.

[SoapyDaz]

When buying Flytoget train tickets, would you have to enable the magswipe feature for Monzo to work if you buy a ticket by swiping at one of the ticket barriers?

[SeanP (Sean Pearce)]

I don’t recall doing anything special… Magstripe was read OK and flytoget charged to Monzo OK.
But not sure of there was an android feature to disable / enable magstripe usage in those days.
This is swiping at the flytoget barriers, not ticket purchase.
Oh, the magstripe option in Monzo is specifically magstripe ATMs so I guess magstripe initiated (not magstripe fallback from chip terminal) is ok for POS?

[SoapyDaz]

Sounds like they have ticket machines as well which is a standard chip and PIN terminal then. Thanks for the info (and raising the point that the magstripe switch in app is for ATMs, overlooked that!)