Monzo runs on the MasterCard scheme, while Portuguese cards are some kind of dual scheme, with one always being Multibanco and the other being usually Visa or MasterCard. When payment terminals support both of the schemes the card supports youāll have a prompt to choose which one you want to use. If the terminal only supports one, that one will be used.
Since Monzo is MasterCard only, it wonāt work with terminals that are Multibanco only. There arenāt many such cases, with CTT (post offices) coming to mind. Some places like McDonalds usually have a separate portable terminal for Visa/MC, which you have to specifically request by pointing out that you have a ācredit cardā or āVisaā.
For people who might be wondering that last wording, ādebit cardā and āMultibancoā are used interchangeably to refer to all cards running on the Multibanco scheme while ācredit cardā and āVisaā are used to refer to any card running on the Visa or MasterCard scheme, or any other that is not Multibanco, independently of the typology (credit, debit or pre paid)
Be aware that the Multibanco ATM network is a different thing from the Multibanco card scheme and the ATMs will work with any type of card for withdrawing money. All the other functionalities that are not withdrawals with cards will only be available with a card running on the Multibanco scheme. That includes withdrawals without card present
Iāve been unable to use my card in ATMs Portugal in the past couple of days (I wanted to withdraw cash). Card payments in shops have worked fine. Iāve used my card here in the last 3 years without any problems.
Iāve tried different ATMs, including going to a bank ATM. The error messages appear immediately when i insert the card in the ATM, and vary from āInvalid card operationā to āinvalid cardā. How can i resolve this?
I tried enabling magstripe but didnāt make a difference.
Iāve tried 2 normal Multibancos. The Mastercard ATL locator app shows them as compatible with Mastercard. I also tried an ATM inside Banco BPI, but got a āinvalid cardā error (maybe this one only allowed BPI cards).
If they say they accept Mastercard, then they must accept all Mastercards - wherever they are issued and whatever type they are. To place a restriction on any of that would be a violation of their agreement with Mastercard. So it shouldnāt be that.
Portuguese ATMs generally donāt seem to need magstripe either, as magstripe-only ATMs are very rare in Europe.
I am a bit stuck as to what else it might be, but from what you have described it sounds like the ATMs either donāt recognise or have blocked the card number.
Perhaps @anon6782920 might be able to help you, as they are a bit of an expert on the banking situation in Portugal?
I have no idea about this specific situation but banks can actually stop accepting cards from certain countries or all international cards at their ATMs with permission from MasterCard. I know some ATM providers in the US got permission to stop accepting international Maestro cards as almost all of their Maestro atm withdrawals were fraudulent. ATB in Canada doesnāt accept international Visa cards anymore either as they had a significant amount of fraud.
That makes sense - any agreement with Mastercard would override the generally-agreed terms of business which require them to accept all Mastercards. The general terms, though, do prohibit discrimination between cards, so the default would be that āthe ruleā stands.
I imagine that the examples youāve given were mainly due to a mismatch in standards making the transactions less secure. Maestro, for example, is usually always a Chip + PIN card, with magstripe only as a fallback for compatibility reasons. Maestro fraud may therefore have relied on using stolen card details on ācloneā cards at magstripe-only ATMs (something that Chip-based ATMs would have rejected). The magstripe liability-shift would have made this very expensive for the banks owning the ATMs, as the fraud would be considered their āfaultā for not upgrading from magstripe-only technology. That would be my guess anyway.
The higher levels of Visa fraud in your other example seem a bit more odd, but I bet it would have been something similar and would not have affected Canadian customers very much, if at all, as all of your ATM transactions would be processed via Interac. It may even have been a decision by the bank to simply only process Interac, and not Visa or Mastercard, rather than special permission by the card networks to only process some of their cards.
This sort of case would be very unlikely in the EU, where all ATMs have Chip support and security standards at both the ATM end and bank card end are very high (equally high). We are also still currently in the transition period, so to block our cards early would be strange as well. A software-based block could probably be easily coded to come into affect at a precise time, so why not wait until the actual end of the transition, if thatās the reason?
The Netherlands has a similar arrangement with Maestro cards - their machines only accept locally issued cards, which is a pain as a significant number of smaller supermarkets - particularly outside Amsterdam - only accept (locally issued) Maestro cards - no cash or other cards at all.
I conducted a little test (11/12th June 2021) in Madeira. I took my Monzo and First Direct card to 4 ATM machines in various locations around Sao Vicente (all Multibanco, some at/in banks, some in supermarkets) and I also made a number of instore PoS purchases.
There were no issues with the PoS purchases in markets, a shop and a pharmacy; and I was able to use contactless for the low totals on both cards effortlessly. The rates were fine, in line with current exchange rates of 1.14/1.15 each time. (It was the same rate as with my FD card using PoS in supermarkets and shops the day before).
All ATM machines accepted my card(s) and offered withdrawals. I wanted to investigate the difference between accepting and rejecting the conversion decision offered.
In each case, I chose to withdraw 10euro. Notably, on the occasion I opted to accept the conversion rate āto my cardās currencyā cost me an extra 99 pence. This wasnāt clearly evident at the time, but Monzo quickly told me what Iād paid. Not sure if the difference between the two options always remains the same (at 12% as it was today). There was some blurb about NOT GUARANTEEING THE RATE when selecting the non-conversion option, which seemed to be ttempting to force me to the higher cost transaction. Expletive.
So, to buy ā¬10,00 cost me Ā£8.64 without conversion and Ā£9.63 with. I think we can all agree the latter is particularly scary, ā12% worse.
When Monzo informed me of the overall costs, it was a good and useful thing, as the ATMs lack clarity on all the fees. Sorry, if it wasnāt clear enough.
It is certainly worth reinforcing the point that itās the ATMās service provider who is charging these unreasonable fees where Monzo and Mastercard do not. The EU has forced the ATM companies to display this info (however small and misleading are their methods for doing that), but where previously they hid it completely.
Personally, I did not experience or report any nefarious āmoney-grabbingā issues with PoS at the time.
However, since then, a PoS machine āofferedā me a conversion in an establishment which - days earlier - had not.
Short on time, I simply cancelled and paid cash. Further investigation is required.
