Monzo on a Cruise

Going on a Fred Olson Cruise to the Caribbean in 3 months time.
Will the card be usable on board and on the Islands

Are you talking about the Beta Prepaid Card or the Preview Current Account Debit Card?

Guess it will depend if their POS terminals are online or offline with the Prepaid.

Beta Prepaid. Will be sad to find it does not work when I already on board

Terminals should be online as a card transactions take very little bandwidth so to me it makes sense from an economic point of view to get a satellite connection rather than missing out on some business from prepaid cards or getting fraud from cancelled/stolen cards.

I think you have to register a Card on board when you first go aboard to uas througout the voyage.

Ooft, you’d be wrong there; most debit/credit cards support some degree of offline usage, and the setup and usage costs for satellite connections to cruises are pretty astronomical :money_with_wings: (for an idea, look at the commercial prices for inmarsat cruise satellites).

On a cruise, you need an automatic pointing array :satellite:, and the figure for this will be at least upper 6 figures for setup. At this point, you might as well just provide wifi to all guests :stuck_out_tongue:

From a purely economical standpoint, the cruise ship may not generate enough revenue from online-only cards in it’s entire service life to justify a satellite connection for card payments :scream:

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give them a ring tomorrow ? see if they recognise bank sort code 04 00 04 - its a prepaid card from a Licenced regulated registered UK bank?

http://www.fredolsencruises.com/before-you-cruise/a-z-cruise-holiday-guide/a

Def check with them. If you are using the prepaid card, it looks like you might well have a problem. See the Fred Olsen website on this. In particular their statement:
“Unfortunately our systems don’t allow us to take Maestro, Solo, Electron or … pre-paid currency cards”

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yes not sure it is a pre paid “currency card” though :slight_smile:

Tony’s post says he is talking about the pre paid card. Isn’t that treated as a currency card by the system?

Looks like a NO then. At least I will be able to use it ashore. ( If there’s anywhere left after these Hurricanes)

Li

I don’t know , but the cruise line would be able to tell him which is why I posted a link in my answer with the contact number :slight_smile:

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Thanks. Looked at the link that’s why I said it’s a NO

Yep. Agreed, best to ask them. It looks like they have some kind of on board card though, which is activated at the start and settled at the end (using a debit or credit card).

Anyway, have a great holiday. The sun will SHINE!

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If the company still says no to Monzo, then maybe it would be best to try Starling, they work like Monzo but have working bank accounts with debit cards.

It is hard for me to recommend someone but Monzo, however this is a one-off case

Ps- they use the MasterCard rate too like Monzo!

Will have to take my Santander Current Account Card to pay the final bill. :persevere:

Oh, hang on! Just reread your original Q and see you are going in 3 months time. If you already have a Monzo prepaid card, you should have a proper Monzo CA by then, so hopefully no problem.

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You should use Starling, unlike Monzo (for the time being), Starling is a fully fledged bank with sort code / account number which should meet the criteria this cruise company is looking for :slight_smile:

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Most cruises already provide (very expensive) Wi-Fi to the hardware is there, and I’m sure the staff themselves are using it somewhat. Processing card transactions requires very little bandwidth (so little it can be done over a legacy modem connection, not even over IP) it makes no sense to me not to take advantage of it…