🇵🇱 Monzo in Poland [Wiki]

Monzo Chat Travelling with Monzo
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This is a wiki crowdsourced by the Monzo Community to help you travel with Monzo.

Just like Wikipedia, anyone can edit it to help out others. If you have any tips or feedback for visiting Poland with Monzo, please feel free to edit this guide. You can also add a comment or question below — someone will then incorporate your comment into the main text below and then delete your comment. To create your own “Monzo in …” guide if one doesn’t already exist, just copy this template into a new post and write away!

Safe travels! :wave: :airplane:

Currency

Poland uses Polish Zloty, PLN.

Price tags often use “zł” as currency acronym, for example 5zł or 10zł/kg.

Monzo users pay the Mastercard exchange rate with no added fees.

Card usage

Chip+PIN payments are universally accepted in any POS and majority of retailers will accept contactless payments. Note that you will have to give your card to the cashier in many cases for chip transactions.

Card payments widely accepted in shops, cafes, restaurants, pubs, bakeries, ticket machines, train stations.

ATMs

Highly recommended - Euronet ATMs are very user friendly, give an option to use English language and allow to decline their currency conversion.

ATM are easy to find, especially in city centres. Most ATMs do not charge any fees (if you have more info, tell us!).

Please note that it’s common for ATMs to be inside bank, so you have to actually walk in. :slight_smile:

Payment and withdrawal limits

In the event that you do use Contactless payment the limit is only 50zł (about £10) and any payments above this will require the entry of a PIN.

All Monzo cards have some payment and withdrawal limits. To check yours before you leave, go to your Profile section of the app and tap on Limits.

Crowdsourced merchant data

As a less popular tourist destination than many countries, the Monzo merchant data is sometimes incorrect (eg. the map shows the wrong location or the name of the place is not correct). Please submit improvements to this data so it can get better for future visitors.

Miscellaneous

Certain taxi companies in bigger cities slowly started to accept card payments.

Traditional open air markets and other types of street vendors rarely accept card payments.

Users reported cases of dynamic currency conversion or eService Payment Acceptance selected as default. Please insist on paying in PLN whenever possible, otherwise you are missing out on nearly unbeatable Monzo’s Mastercard currency exchange rate. :slight_smile:

Pay at the pump Shell station was reported as working fine.

Offline terminals are uncommon.

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Euronet ATMs now charge 13 PLN for cash withdrawals. Have spent August bank holiday weekend in Kraków.

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In Poland now. Monzo (and particular bill splitting) has been a godsend!

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Heading to Wroclaw next week

Intending to take minimal to no cash

Will update how I get on :no_good_man:

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I just had a week in Krakow! Most places accept card, but card terminals will ask you to choose currency or whether to accept a conversion - all in Polish, usually!

If you don’t select one of the options in a couple of seconds, they seem to automatically choose the more expensive GBP. From my experience, pressing the top left button or cancel on the terminal will get it to charge in PLN.

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I stayed in Wroclaw and had no problems at all with my Monzo card! Didn’t use any cash at all :smiley: Enjoy your time there - it is a great city.

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Thanks!

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Used my monzo card when I travelled to Krakow in January and encountered no problems with card payments, I did withdraw cash however the atm gave out large notes which shops refused to take and had to get them changed down at a money exchange place.

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How is the situation at the post office? When I tried purchasing postage stamps a few years ago, it was cash-only.

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I was in smaller and bigger post offices and all are accepting card payments. Not sure if they do for small amount of transactions tho.

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I’m a bit surprised that considering how much 1 zł can buy, payment cards can be used more easily here than across the border in Germany. It’s almost as universally accepted as France.

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Hello, it’s me again. Happy 2020 too and stuff.

I am back in Poland and I have some bad news for people who want to use ATM’s. It looks like all Polish ATMs “normal banks like ING or ripoff EuroNet ATMs” are adding a transaction fee if you are trying to withdraw money. Either if you are accepting the exchange given by the ATM (very bad idea, as exchange rate is :poop: ) or when you are withdrawing money leaving the exchange to your bank.

Here is an example:
I wanted to withdraw 50PLN (around £9.20).
ATM gave me 2 options:

A) Withdraw money leaving exchange rates and stuff to my bank but they are charging additional 15.90PLN for processing this transaction. MasterCard exchange was £1.00 = 5.42PLN that day.

B) Withdraw money using ATMs exchange rate which was 4.82PLN :poop:

So if you are planning to spend some cash in Poland I would advise you to get some English Notes and exchange them in “Kantor” to avoid any stupid fees. I am not a fan of that either.

I wonder when they have introduced fees for processing foreign cards. :thinking: as I used before with Monzo and there were no fees at all.

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Sounds awful. Have you tried many different bank ATMs?

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Not yet. I am going to check more soon. From what I have spotted many banks are using EuroNet ATMs in their branches which kinda ssucks.

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At Warsaw now, been here 3 days. Had no problems in using my card at all. All the bars I been to also take card. No cash required so far.

This is going to be a cash free holiday.

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Poland is way ahead of Germany as regards ATMs - I paid for fruit and veg in a local market with the equivalent of a SumUp machine.

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Euronet actually pay shopkeepers for having the machines on their premises. The situation if anything is worse in the Czech Republic. I can’t remember which Polish airport this is, but Euronet basically came to an agreement with the airport to have nothing other than their ATMs there - Krakow, perhaps. Truly financial bottom feeders of the worst order

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A funny thing is that I have an account in Poland with mBank and when I was in Wroclaw 3 weeks ago I used an ATM which was EuroNet and I was charged 5PLN/1GBP for withdrawing money… So even local banks are :duck:ed up by EuroNet at airports :see_no_evil:

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Have just come back from Poland and have to say I’m incredibly pleased with how well Monzo worked over there. Was around the Poznan area for 5 days and tapped around 30 times, never had a decline, some places already had merchant data prepopulated and saved a ton compared to what the card machines were offering for DCC.

Didn’t try to withdraw cash as I just got 100 zloty from M&S before I left but didn’t end up actually needing to use it, only left it as tips at some restaurants we went to.

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I had the same experience in Poland - even market stall holders in Poznan accepted cards !

The minimum spend must have been very low - I bought a tin of coke for 2 zloty there and it accepted it - I note that in lots of French supermarkets the minimum charge is €1.

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