šŸ‡°šŸ‡· Monzo in South Korea [Wiki]

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 South Korea with Monzo, please feel free to edit this guide. You can also add a comment t or question below — someone will then incorporate your comment into the main text below and then delete your comment. To create your own ā€œMonzo in ā€¦ā€ guide if one doesn’t already exist, just copy this template into a new post and write away!

Safe travels! :wave: :airplane:


Currency

South Korea’s currency is the South Korean won (ā‚©)

The going rate can be found on the Mastercard exchange site.

Card usage

The current account card is not currently working with a number of merchants in South Korea. We’re working hard on fixing this but have no definitive timeline for the moment.

ATMs

  • Most ATMs provide the ability to select a language.
  • ATMs are generally located inside of branches.
  • When using the machines, selecting ā€˜Checking Account’ is advised.
  • The majority of ATMs utilise magstripe so be sure to enable it every 24 hours!
    ATMs in convenience stores don’t work with Monzo even when marked ā€˜global’. You need to use a bank. If there is a row of them look for the one with the different writing over the top. This will be the global card reading machine

Payment and withdrawal limits

All Monzo cards have some payment and withdrawal limits. To check yours before you leave, tap ā€œAccountā€ under the picture of your card and then ā€œSpending and card limitsā€.

Crowdsourced merchant data

Data can be patchy due to mapping restrictions in the country against foreign data use/exporting.

Miscellaneous


To edit this guide, just tap the pencil icon below. Alternatively, add a reply with your comments and someone from the community will incorporate your suggestions into the guide and then delete your comment.

3 Likes

Hi, I got back from Korea yestersay having spent 10 days there. I wanted to give an overview of my use of Monzo in Korea for any fellow travellers.

The card worked in the following;
Kimbab Records (indie record shop in Hondae)
Burger King
Olive Young (cosmetics chain)
Paris Baguette (bakery chain)

It didn’t work in the following;
Uniqlo (global clothing store) in Myeongdeong
Daiso
HomePlus (Korean wide supermarket)
A skin clinic/pharmacy whose name I forget.

Is there any update on Monzo working in South Korea? Would be disappointing to see it not work in the majority of shops.

There just seems to be an issue with foreign MasterCards in general in SK. Both my UK and Canadian MasterCards were unreliable in SK but my Visa cards worked fine.

1 Like

Unfortunately Monzo does not work in South Korea, I’ve tried in several shops like Starbucks, Uniqlo, 7Eleven and the transaction was always declined. My debit card from a UK high street bank works perfectly - I hope Monzo will solve this issue soon, otherwise they are not really a reliable card when travelling outside Europe.

Just wondering if anyone had any recent updates on how monzo works in South Korea? I have created an account very recently, but have read that the card has issues in South Korea. I’m wondering if anyone knows how many of these issues have been solved. I don’t really need to use it for withdrawing money, just to make small payments day to day. I’d appreciate any feedback!

I was there 2 months ago. My card didn’t work in Daiso, Artbox and Kyoto bookstore but was fine everywhere else, apart from one random time when it didn’t work in a CU convenience store that I visited pretty much daily LOL.
I withdrew money at Woori and KEB bank and both were fine.

1 Like

I was recently in South Korea, and noticed that it didn’t work in any of the stores or hotels that I tried to use it in.

A couple of things I noticed that was really disappointing:

  • It seems that Monzo know it doesn’t work properly in South Korea. Why can’t Monzo send a notification to tell customers when they try to use it (and it doesn’t work) that there are issues in how it works in South Korea.
  • I contacted the customer service when it didn’t work, and they first told me that the problem was with the terminal. Then when I explained other cards worked, and that my card didn’t work on other South Korean terminals, the advisor told me my card is probably faulty. Why is the customer service advisor unaware of the correct information?

If Monzo is aware of the problems with card transactions then that would be annoying.

I’m currently in Seoul and having to carry enough cash to match any card purchase is very frustrating… especially when I’ve hit my ATM free withdrawal limit.

1 Like

We’re currently in Seoul and it’s declined at more places than it has worked.

It worked at a small street vendor and a restaurant for lunch. But didn’t work at cafe’s and a ā€˜vintage’ mall we went to

1 Like

After a trip to Korea we found that there are still issues with many merchants declining transactions for no apparent reason.

Sometimes this was due to user error (which is quite frequent as there are several other different NFC/IC card standards in use which you or the merchant may try to use accidentally), there does seem to be something strange going on with chip-and-nothing transactions.

Generally, when given the option, chip-and-signature seems to work OK. We didn’t once get a chip-and-PIN transaction that I remember (despite the hardware being available in many merchants). We did manage to successfully do a contactless transaction to two, but as we weren’t making any transactions with PIN entry we quickly reached our PIN entry limit and contactless was disabled.

Towards the end of our trip, we just had to take out cash to guaruntee that we would be able to pay for things - not a great experience and meant we couldn’t benefit from Mastercard protection on larger purchases.

I am currently in South Korea and had a nightmare with Monzo.

For context: I am a long, long time customer, and pay for Monzo Premium as I travel abroad frequently with work. I have just come from Japan, where I had zero issues.

At some point early on in my South Korea trip, I had transactions declined for no particular reason. I contacted support, and they were extremely unhelpful.

From what I can gather, it seems that what has happened is that PIN verification is required for further transactions, but since South Korea is largely signature verification - the transactions are being auto-declined. Monzo has no way in place to accommodate this.

I would have expected that signatures would be fine (like any other bank I’ve used), or… in-app verification (I have SIM data). However. Even if the current setup is a regulatory requirement, Monzo’s customer support provided zero assistance. For days now they have just kept sending me the same predefined responses about how I must have forgotten my PIN, and how to get a reminder. It is pathetic.

From forum posts here, I have discovered that sending money in-app to a contact can initiate a PIN verification, which then over-rides the requirement for a fixed period - but Monzo have failed to acknowledge this, or give any help. They blamed the merchant (laughably suggesting I speak to the retailer), or told me consistently that my query was being ā€˜escalated’, with no change in their response.

TL;DR - Monzo is not reliable in South Korea. I am incredibly frustrated at their poor response and almost total lack of support.

2 Likes

The posts above yours would seem to confirm this.

Did other cards work OK, or was it a Monzo issue?

Some observations on a recent trip to Korea:

Random declines definitely are still happening. I was in a Uniqlo branch and tried to pay with my Monzo card and it got declined twice, so I paid with cash instead. I seem to remember a similar issue on previous trips to Korea too, for example in 2019. I didn’t try paying hotel bills with my Monzo card; I used my Zopa credit card instead which worked generally fine although with signature rather than PIN.

ATM withdrawals work much more reliably though and had no issues with Monzo. I had Magstripe turned on but not sure if it was actually needed or not. Ultimately I decided to just tolerate the extra fees (the 3% charged by Monzo above the free allowance) just to have peace of mind because of the random declines when doing card transactions.

Many automated machines won’t accept foreign cards, e.g. at railway stations there are lots of ticket machines that say ā€œdomestic card onlyā€. I tried one anyway and it started asking for details like the first and third character of a password (??) and then I gave up, so I assume this is some kind of domestic card security authorisation.

There’s a VISA card marketed to foreign tourists, I think it’s called Namane or similar. Apparently it has a domestic card functionality on it but you can only charge it with cash at (a limited number) of machines e.g. at Seoul station so having to do that might just be a bit annoying.

Get yourself a T-money card, you can pick one up at a station, 7-11 or at the airport. It’s not quite on the same usefulness scales as HK Octopus or Japan Pasmo/Suica but it makes public transport a lot easier. I know some Korean but it made life a lot easier on rural buses etc especially if you’re not quite sure how to say where you’re going. The above mentioned Namane(?) card apparently has a dual purse functionality so you can use it for T-money too so I guess it could be useful if you don’t already have a transportation card.

Korea is an absolutely wonderful place to visit. Just make sure you carry cash!

You can top up with an international MasterCard (see here) but there’s a fee (if you look at the tutorial video provided it’s 3.3%). You also still have to get the card at one of the machines in Seoul.

I know it would be a hassle, but can you reset the PIN request timer by using an ATM? You might need to get a balance to force it to contact Monzo, but wouldn’t need to withdraw any cash.

Didn’t get a single decline with Revolut in Seoul and that was across a wide variety of shops, eatieres and ATMs