Have you tried to approach a bank over in the US to open a checking account? If your a student they may wave charges for you.
Many moons ago I managed to open a Bank of America Checking account.
Zero fees for five years. Relatively simple to open provided you have ID. And you donāt need a SSN.
Just tried my first purchase with Monzo - tickets from an American website (Tickets for World Trade Center Observatory). But the payment was declined due to āinsufficient address verificationā and that āIf it is their policy to only provide Zip Code verificationā your order cannot be processed.
Before I look at other means of paying - I wanted to check if payments on US sites not supported by Monzo at all?
Thanks
I assume you were buying from the official site? https://oneworldobservatory.com/
If youād set the country to the UK, Iād suggest a quick in app chat to support and they will be able to check if the request made it to them and if they refused it.
I have done a lot of online shopping here (amazon, airlines, tickets for all kinds of things, etc.) with my Monzo and it worked 99% of the time. Problems exist when the website does not accept the UK billing address (it happened to me once with a food delivery app) or similarly if itās restricted to a certain place (for example, wanted to buy hoquei tickets but the billing address should have had a zip code of the local teamās city).
I find it weird that a tourist atraction wonāt accept Monzo due to failure to check zip code 
Ended up having a chat with Monzo support who made a change to my account on their side - and they asked that I made sure the billing address I used was exactly the same as the one registered with Monzo.
Went through first time 
When using bank cards in metro card machines in NYC, your prompted for a ZIP code. Try 99999 or 01122.
My Curve card did that with the contactless vending machines when I was in NY in May (before Iād heard of Monzo, unfortunately), so I think it might be something to do with the contactless stuff in prepaid cards and their vending machines.
Monzo working great on my USA RV trip. So far used it in San Diego and Las Vegas. Also booked RV sites ahead in Santa Barbara.
Works really well with Uber to get Megger cheap cabs in the above Cities.
Only knock back so far was when I tried to use it in a pay at the pump petrol station. My Barclaycard didnāt work either so no Monzoās fault!
Will report further on the journey from Vegas to Santa Barbara and on to San Francisco.
Love the instant debit message when you pay for something!
Got 1.35 exchange rate to the pound which is 4 cents better than Barclaycard and way better than local rates. Well done Monzoš
Been in the states for 48 hours, using Monzo abroad for the first time - has worked flawlessly so far (as has my Starling - using both for different budgets). Monzo sent a handy little guide to my app though as soon as Iād used it for the first time, itās the little things like that which make the difference to me.
Also impressed that despite smashing through 4 states within 2 days itās not started decliningā¦ usually my CC goes mental on these road trips. $1.35 is a cracking rate at the moment too so Iām chuffed.
Hi new to monzo. Im travelling to the states for 5 days to nyc and was just planning on using my monzo card. Am i right in thinking that i enable magstripe on the app to make withdrawls at atm machines? Will i still be asked for my pin? Bit worried heading over there and not being able to get cash from atm. Sorry if this has been covered
James
The only sad thing about this comment is the fact that $1.35 is considered a cracking rate.
I know! We go every year for 2-3 weeks and in the last 9 years weāve seen it as high as $1.80 ish but as low as about $1.21. Weāre still managing to do a good 400 miles on a $35 tank of gas so Ā£25 or so, only thing we notice more is shopping isnāt as much of a bargain. First trip in a long time Iām not hitting the Apple store!!
I believe you will still be asked for your PIN. Itās just that the ATM will read the card data off the magstripe, not the chip.
Note that enabling the magstripe only lasts for 24 hours, so you will need to make sure you have network access to re-enable it if using an ATM a day or more later. If you think you wonāt have network access, send a message to the Customer Operations team on in-app chat, and they might be able to enable magstripe for a longer period of time.
Iāve had transactions from both Walgreens pharmacy and Target declined today using CA.
Both transactions were accepted afterwards using pre pay Monzo which Iāve been using in these places for months.
Thanks for the report, thatās odd. Make sure to report it over in-app chat if you havenāt already. That way the COps team can pass it on to engineering.
Have done. Thanksā:+1:t2:
Just back from Vegas and didnāt have this issue and I bought a lot meals! The initial value came out and was then updated later with the higher amount, there were never points where I was waiting in funds being returned. Maybe this is an improvement at the way Monzo processes them or maybe itās the way the vendors are doing it?
Hey were you the guy at the Meetup last night who said he had issues with Chip and Sign in the when using the current account?
Did you get answer from the team on why this might be and the fix?
Hi I wasnāt at meet up but have queried about chip and sign in US.
Outcome was that chip and sign is not supported at the moment by current account.
It works fine with prepay.
The only places Iāve had issues with CA card is at Walgreens / Duane reade drug stores or Target.
Hope this helps
Can anyone from Monzo comment that this will be resolved with the full current account launch?