Mysterious refund

Good point nanos. :+1:
I shouldn’t say “presentment deadline”, I should use “pending auth validity period”.

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I totally agree here and it is something I will raise to see if we can be a bit clearer about this. Interestingly, we often get customers contact us to report an automatic authorisation reversal as an unrecognised transaction so it is certainly something that needs looking into :+1:

Sorry to hear that, I’ll take a look this evening for you. Would you be able to DM me your account email address?

DM sent. Thanks for your support Hugo Hugh. :star_struck:
(Sorry for getting your name wrong) :grimacing:

I’ve never quite liked that Monzo does represent these reversals as a refund, instead of greying out or striking through the original transaction.

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I agree with you this would be better solution. Maybe with an added note. “The Money was never collected by the merchant, but may be collected at a future date"

There are two types of Mastercard authorisations:

  • final auths (with a 7 day payment guarantee period)
  • preauths (with a 30 day payment guarantee period)

A merchant can send subsequent linked auths to request to increase the preauth period for a further 30 days but this can be declined.

cc @simonb @alexs

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My recollection may be wrong but last time I read the manual there were three types, as in addition to POS preauth and auths their is ATM auth periods too:

• final auths (with a 7 day payment guarantee period FROM THE AUTHORIZATION APPROVAL DATE)
POS preauths (with a 30 day payment guarantee period)

AND

• ATM auths (with a 7 day payment guarantee period)

As far as I’m aware (and I’ve just skimmed the Mastercard docs again) an ATM just does a final auth. I can’t see anything in an ATM auth message beyond the final auth flag.

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In the US they used to have a week to authorise an ATM transaction! Maybe they weren’t connected to networks and did them in batches or something, the Americans always had slightly different rules (and it was some years ago, 11 Dec 2014, that I read their TPR doc). Assume Europe (and UK) more advanced, after all we did come out with EMV contactless before them.

EDIT: Obviously I’m tired, apparently that chargeback protection period was only applicable in Europe where the message reason code is 4808

I might be missing something, and maybe this is obvious, but what are the practical implications of the payment guarantee period for your customers (ie us)?

Does it mean that after 7 or 30 days (depending on auth type) they can no longer collect the money, if they forget? I believe not?

Also, which of the two is more common, and can we as customers distinguish the two?

Do you treat them differently?

A bit more information would be appreciated here.

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but what are the practical implications of the payment guarantee period for your customers (ie us)?

It’s the period that an authorisation will last before we’ll automatically reverse it. This is only likely to be noticable for things like hotel deposits where the hotel hasn’t explicitly reversed it. In these cases by default the auth will last for 30 days.

Does it mean that after 7 or 30 days (depending on auth type) they can no longer collect the money, if they forget? I believe not?

I wish! If they collect the money within the payment guarantee period then they are guaranteed it. The money can be collected after the payment guarantee period and by Mastercard rules the issuer has to attempt to honour the payment. We are able to issue a chargeback if the account being billed has been closed. In reality if a merchant/acquirer presents loads of payments a long time after the payment guarantee period expires then:

  • a proportion of customers will mistakenly claim it is fraud and they’ll lose some money
  • they’ll have a bunch of unhappy customers
  • if they do it a lot Mastercard will fine them

It’s rare that an acquirer does this and it is usually when they have a bug in their system which meant that the payment wasn’t collected on time.

Also, which of the two is more common, and can we as customers distinguish the two?

For us, final auths are more common as in general almost all card present transactions are final auths. Chip verified transactions have to be final auths unless the merchant is willing to sacrifice the liability shift that the chip provides. Almost all e-commerce transactions are preauths.

Do you treat them differently?

It affects how long the auth will last before being automatically reversed.

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Thanks! That’s really informative.

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I think their merchant chargeback fine is based on a % rather than a monetary amount, although they certainly used to also look at how new the merchant was (on the Mastercard scheme) and the size of their turnover.

I’ve been caught out by this when pre-ordering collectors edition box sets (music) to the point where, in spite of ordering in advance, my order had been cancelled. This was because the money was no longer in my account (having spent it on something else), Luckily I didn’t lose out as I transferred enough to cover it and asked them to retry.

This is where Pots in the Current Account now come in handy :slight_smile:

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Just happened to me. I woke up this morning to find a notification of a £1 Amazon refund to my Monzo account timed at 1:01am. I see people are commenting this is common practice when buying tickets, which I never have. As far as I’m aware, everything I’ve purchased with Amazon recently has been paid in full too.

When you add a new card to Amazon it often authorises a quid for 30 days, check if you bought something 30/31 days ago.

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Oh, I’ll most certainly have bought something 30(ish) days ago, there’s always something coming from Amazon in this house. Definitely won’t have been a new card added to the account though. The only (current in date) card on my Amazon account is my Monzo card, and that’s been there since I had it last year.

It doesn’t have to be a new card. I’m still waiting for my £1 to expire from a week ago and it’s certainly not the first time this card has been used with Amazon.

Hi @UncoupledSPY & welcome :wave:

That does sound odd and is probably the result of an order cancellation, rather than a financial error on their side. As you say, call them and ask them about the status of the order.

(Don’t spend any of that £1,920.62 just yet :wink:)

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I have had a lot of issues with Smarkets (betting website) and Monzo this week.

I credited my smarkets account many times and was getting some of the transactions matched by full refunds on Monzo in subsequent days (and the new balance available to use in Monzo, whilst also showing and being available to use on smarkets).

Before I knew it all the money had been re-refunded again and I felt a bit poorer, even though the money was just a refund error.

I asked smarkets what was going on and they said the issue is on Monzo’s side.

As always, I take the merchant’s reasons with a pinch of salt (it’s never their fault, is it?), but hearing your story makes me think it could be.a wider issue with Monzo.

This could be a bit of a :cowboy_hat_face: incident for certain reasons, but I don’t want to spell out why for all the lurking journos desperate to fire shots at Monzo.

TLDR: don’t get your hopes up that you’ve won the refund lottery jackpot as it’ll undoubtedly come out again very soon!