🇿🇦 Monzo in South Africa

Have just booked some accommodation for forthcoming trip in SA next month. Sent card details by email to accommodation office there for them to process and transaction in local currency went through no problem. App thinks I am in South Africa already and has given me the welcome to…, advice. I don’t fly until 12 sept. Hopefully app won’t get confused as next transaction will be GBP.

I suppose it may do but it feels like a good test scenario to the latent software engineer still lurking inside me somewhere. That’s what the Beta process is all about after all.

Thanks a lot for sharing this @lezhjh. It’s such a interesting use case, we’ll think about it.

A possible solution would be to add some sort of “I’m not in South Africa yet” button to inform us that you are not there yet so we can turn off the “trip mode” until you actually fly… but I wonder if we can do something a bit smarter :slight_smile:

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Just got back from 3 weeks in South Africa, drew cash, bought stuff (in the middle of nowhere) with no problems at all. Also I got a much better rate than mate, he’s now on the waiting list!!

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Thanks @Scubanut. I’m planning to use my new card in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Middle of nowhere in SA is a useful part of the jigsaw.

I’m assuming you all used it in SA and it worked. I had a perfect experience and lower exchange rates than when I used my revolut card.

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Just a heads up. The current implementation of the current account doesn’t work on all the atm I have tried as they’re magstripe. Monzo have advised this will be fine when they enable the switch to allow magstripe in the current account in the near future

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Couldn’t get the CA to work on any ATM yesterday. Monzo Customer Service said this was due to the banks not knowing their Sort Code and MasterCard are fixing this.

Hi I am starting my travels in South Africa tomorrow.
I still have the pre-paid card. Will it continue to work as it has been so far?

If you haven’t migrated to CA yet your PP card will continue to work at least until the end of the year.

Fabulous. That means I can withdraw cash from ATM when I arrive tomorrow.

Thanks so much

We spent November in South Africa firstly at our son’s wedding in Jo’burg then travelling west to Sun City then south to Cape Town. Used the Monzo card wherever we went and it worked every time even in back of beyond places giving me a much better rate of exchange than my travelling companions. Only hiccup I had was coming back through Schipol airport when somehow someone managed to get my card details and tried to make 2 web purchases, Monzo were on the ball and declined the first one as suspicious and told me, I froze the card and the next try was blocked. Monzo replaced the card as soon as I got home, that was better service than I have ever had with any bank in over several decades of banking.

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Turns out 3D secures is required to top up Vodacom SIM cards. So have to buy credit in store

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I just returned from 2 weeks in Cape Town (my wife is out there for a month) and we both used our Monzo accounts for pretty much every purchase we made and cash withdrawal without any issues paying.

The only odd quirk I found was that a few places seemed to make an initial authorisation or charge, then took the payment again (so that two charges appeared on my statement) but several days later refunded or cancelled the initial charge. I have no idea why this happened or even how they did it.

I’ve never seen that on a transaction in the UK and it was a bit odd but otherwise no problems anywhere (including fuel stations).

So I’m back from a trip in South Africa. I still had the pre-paid card. Used it numerous times for payments and atm withdrawals everywhere and had no issues at all.

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Used card in Cape Town for three weeks. Got great rates, updated immediately. Accepted everywhere.

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Just in the middle of a trip to South Africa. Every ATM wants to charge R50 fee by the local bank for using the ATM. My alternative travel card (Starling) is not having charges applied. I have a current account Crowd Investor card

Interesting. Found Monzo had the fee and Revolut did not as well…

Over 6 weeks in SA I used a Revolut Visa card with zero issues. >50 POS transactions and a couple of ATM withdrawals. ABSA ATMs offered the 50 ZAR fee but Nedbank and FNB didn’t charge. No one tried the DCC scam although it was offered on the card terminals.

Maybe someone from Monzo can chime in on why there is a difference between them and the others?