🇪🇸 Monzo in Spain [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 Spain 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:

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Currency

Spain uses the Euro (€).

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

Card usage

Chip & PIN is everywhere. Contactless is common, but some Spanish merchants aren’t in the habit of using it. They will take your card to insert it instead. More up to date merchants will scan your card contactless but it will then prompt for your PIN for larger transactions - don’t walk away thinking you’ve paid simply because they tapped your card!

Swiping is usually a last resort.

Your card probably won’t work at toll roads (e.g. the main motorway toll between Alicante and Benidorm / Valencia the machines say the card doesn’t work) - take cash instead!

ATMs

Beware Dynamic Currency Conversion “Do you wish to pay in GBP?” messages on both ATM and shop POS. ALWAYS select EUR (their DDC rate is very bad v the Monzo Mastercard rate). This is now very common everywhere, and you may find the cashier asks you this question too.

ATM operator charges:
Banca March - Fee free
Abanca - Fee free
Deutsche bank - Free
Unicaja - Fee free and no DCC prompt either

Bankinter - 4€ Fee (was free)
BBVA - Charge 1.87€
Bankia - Charge 1.75€
Caixa Bank - Charge - 2€
Santander - Charge 7€
Cajamar - was free, now is 1.85€
Banco Sabadell - Charge 1.90€
Cajasiete - Charge 1.85€

The Mastercard ATM locator website is useful to find Mastercard ATMs.

Payment and withdrawal limits

All Monzo cards have some payment and withdrawal limits. To check yours before you leave, tap “Account” under the picture of your card and then “Spending and card limits”.

Crowdsourced merchant data

The Monzo merchant data is often 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

“Just something to bare in mind is that if a Spanish merchant follows local laws properly and inspects your card, not having your full name on the card might be an issue. I had this with Avis car rental and they required one of my cards with my name as evidence that I hadn’t robbed the card.”

If you are using Three to roam, you probably won’t get iPhone notifications from Monzo. The app still works fine though.

“The experience we have just had in Spain with the toll roads is that the card is NOT accepted in the automatic machine where you just pop the card in and go through if you do not activate the mag stripe. Please remember to activate it and you won’t have any problem, alternatively go to a manual booth with a person and they have a credit card machine then a contactless payment or chip and pin will work fine.”

  • Enabling the magstripe didn’t work for us in Alicante (July 2019)

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.

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46

I was in Valencia the last few days and discovered that TeleBanco also offer free withdrawals from Monzo :+1: also contactless seems to be quite common. A few times I went to inset my card when I was told to “tap” :nerd_face:

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47

Hi lee1706. So can i withdraw some € in telebanco using monzo card? I am in spain and I would like to have some cash.

48

Hi Turko

I used my card in València to withdraw € at TeleBanco without any charge.

Lee

2 Likes
49

I happened to be in Spain when Apple Pay launched last week and was surprised at the number of retailers that not only accepted it (all), but for the ones that went way past the 30€ limit without any further interaction (number or signature)! A huge boost to payment convenience… :smiley:

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50

I live partly in Sosin and am very happy with Monzo I use it everywhere

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51

Monzo via Apple Pay works in Ibiza although paying with an Apple Watch still seems a novelty / oddity to some retailers!

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53

Caixa bank is currently free for withdrawals but make sure you don’t accept their conversion rate.

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54

Cajamar €3.95

55

Currently in Spain; we haven’t been able to use any of our Monzo cards in any of the toll road machines in Catalonia even with magstripe transactions enabled.

Avoid Santander, they’re charging €5 for withdrawals.

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56

Definitely. Unless you are a Santander customer. Then they are free.

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57

List of SPANISH banks for free cash withdrawal please?

T h a n k Y o u

58

:eyes: There’s a list in the very first post in this topic to start with - 4 of them are listed as ‘Fee free’

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59

Word of warning: following this guide I withdrew cash from a Caixa Bank ATM and was charged a €1.85 fee

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60

Hello @ECSmit & welcome :wave:

Thanks for the report. I’ve edited the list of banks in the Wiki to reflect this.

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61

Without any prior warning?!

62

Must be a recent thing. They were free in Majorca in February. I’ll be in Seville next week so will see what is happening there. R-

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63

Caixa has never charged me, although the machines always say they will. Tested with Monzo, Revolut and Bunq.

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64

The ATM did give me the usual generic warning that “your bank may charge you”, and then after selecting the amount I wished to withdraw it asked me to accept the €1.85 charge before proceeding.

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65

I’m not understanding the need for a warning then. That’s expected and entirely normal behaviour.