Will struggle to leave Santander 123. I get a lot of money back for paying my bills by Direct Debit from my 123
Santander for your bills, Monzo CA for your holidays, maybe?
Will see how it goes
In the event they already have wifi, then itâs certainly a no-brainer â I was talking about using online card payments as the basis for connecting a cruise ship
Of course, youâll get merchants on-board complaining about how long payments take to process, and then all of a sudden someone has decided that terminals should be offline again
With Hurricane âIrmaâ destroying everything the whole money thing looks academic now.
Should think the next thing will be Fred Olsen cancelling the Cruise
I used my Monzo prepaid onboard with Royal Caribbean and it was fine, no transaction fees either as everything onboard was in USD! You may be able to change the card at guest services once onboard.
Sorry this reply is a bit late, and current events may have overtaken slightly. Tourism is hugely important to the Caribbean economy though, so I would hope that at worst you would have a modified itinerary rather than a cancelled cruise.
From the Fred Olsen website:
What money will I need to have on board?
We'll give you an on board cruise card when you check-in for your cruise holiday. Just present your debit or credit card and sign a receipt - and keep a copy for your reference. You can use your cruise card to pay for any of the services on board you might like to use, except foreign currency exchange or playing at our Gaming Tables. Anything you pay for will be automatically charged to your account and debited from your card when you leave the cruise. You can keep up to date and check your balance at any time. We accept most credit cards - Diners Club, Eurocard, Mastercard and Visa. (Currently, we regret we are unable to accept American Express cards.) All credit card payments have a 1.5% surcharge, but we also accept debit cards with no surcharge.
The Monzo Current Account card should work - maybe not right now while it is still being tested and some places havenât updated their databases yet, but three months down the line? Should be fine.
Youâll also find, probably, that when youâre on board itâs much easier to use your room key - or âon board cruise cardâ as Fred Olsen call it - to charge any and all on board purchases, so unless youâre using the Monzo card to settle up itâs kind of a moot question.
The same question about most other cruise lines can certainly be answered by checking their websites. Thereâs no need for uninformed theorising about their wifi capability and what kind of satellite internet they may have on board. I canât think of a single major line that doesnât have any kind of internet connection at all, and thatâs been the case for a good number of years.
Source: Have cruised with a Monzo card several times, used the card on shore and never needed to even try using it on board as I always used the cruise card instead. Ship enviroments encourage that as itâs much easier to leave your cabin with just one single card rather than a whole wallet full of them.