Non-UK Resident (Outside UK) / Questions

[jrafraf73998 (John Rafael)]

Heya guys, I’m a newbie here.

Well, first of all, I want to congratulate to all staffs of Monzo of having a bank status! I hope you guys will be different than the rest of the traditional banks I encountered. I hope you guys will shake things up in the near future! Since part of its foundation was crowdfunded, I wish I could’ve have known sooner so that I can contribute a little. But mehh…

I was round around the internet to look for prepaid cards that can be useful in my travels, until I stumbled upon this. My main intent of opening one was to have flexibility since I travel frequently. With interest in mind of signing up, I was bummed that it is only open to UK residents at this stage (I am from the Philippines, currently residing in Malaysia, soon might be residing in Maldives)

Four questions

1. Is it possible for a Non-UK resident to open a Monzo current/debit account (or planning to?)

(please say yes or maybe or planning to?)

Since Monzo is a registered bank in the UK, instinctively one might ought to have a UK address/identification/paperwork to open one - like most of the traditional banks I have encountered in a foreign country.

Well, I do not live in the UK and I do not have a fixed address since I live on rent most of the time wherever I go, And it will likely to continue to do so, since I’ll be mobile most of the time.

Having an ‘‘digital account / bank’’ like this will be great, since it will give me flexibility along the way.

2. Are you guys planning to open a EURO/USD Account (or with any other major currencies)

Or having a current account that enables you to switch currencies wherever you go, in your phone? Like those nifty features in Monzo app.

Because of Brexit? Again, flexibility?

3. Assuming that my smartphone and card are stolen simultaneously,

Lets assume out of unfortunate circumstances that I was robbed by a gang while my phone and Monzo card are stolen. Are there any planned procedures in place so that one can block any transactions or close temporarily the current accounts online?

4. Secure transactions (especially online shopping)

Since I live in Malaysia, most of our banks here have a feature called the Transaction Authorization Code (TAC). Not sure whether they have a similar feature in the UK banks/elsewhere or not - if there are any, then it might be called something else. What it does is that whenever you are preforming an online transactions/shopping etc, and after entering the card details one will be prompted to a different page (mainly to their respective bank provider) to enter the code. To get the code, one must receive an SMS containing the 6 digit code (5 or 8 depending on the bank itself). Once a person enters the code in the page correctly, then it will be automatically deducted in to their respective current accounts, then one will be prompted another SMS message of such transaction. This way, it provides an extra layer of security, to ensure that transaction is made by that person itself.

Is Monzo planning to do such things or similar to it (or maybe an idea that can be added on to the App), assuming that one preformed an online transaction/shopping, instead of entering a code, one can just check through the app and approve such transactions?

[Avishai (Marta)]

Hi man, here are some short answers for you.

1. It’s not possible to open Monzo account without UK address. Monzo plans to expand worldwide (though EU would be first I presume), but those are high level plans and I doubt you’ll be able to see anything on this front in 2017.

Unless your source of income is in GBP, I don’t think Monzo would be beneficial for you right now. You can make international payments into Monzo account via bank transfer, but exchange rate (and fees ) will be forced by your income source. For example, if you have bank account in Philippines, exchange rate will be of that bank when paying money into Monzo.

There are some other multi-currency prepaid cards that seem to be like a better fit, though their fees&exchange rates are not as good as Monzo. I checked out https://www.moneycorp.com/uk/travel-money/explorer-mastercard/, but I’m not sure if UK address is a requirement there. There could be other cards offering similar deals, but technically they are multi-currency wallets with card, not really a bank account.

2. I think EUR account is being worked on, BUT I don’t recall any promises from Monzo when this would be available to users. USD/EUR accounts are quite frequent ‘wanna have’ from Monzo users though.

3. You can call international number to ask for an assistance and/or email monzo, but it would require access to some other phone/internet.
   Functionality wise: Monzo can log you out from the app. Email associated with Monzo account can be temporarily changed, because most likely your phone will have your emails as well, so it would prevent anyone from logging back in after being logged out by Monzo Support.
   In the future - web interface for Monzo can be used for urgent stuff (requires some other phone/PC/laptop/tablet and internet connection).
   I’d recomment reading What to do if phone is lost/stolen while travelling? because we went through many scenarios there!

See post below for 4)
4) Mastercard has it’s own version of ‘3d secure’ - https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/consumers/payment-technologies/securecode.html
Monzo issues Mastarcard cards, so logically, Secure Code will kick in, but I think it depends how merchant integrates payments. Merchant’s payment process can specifically trigger 3d secure. When this happens, bank can do this silently (it will show “MasterCard … please wait” prompt, but then proceed to next screen without asking for code. It’s done when banks see little to no risk in your payment so they mercifully skip it for you ), or display page like this:

Either way, merchant is no longer responsible for chargebacks in claims like “I didn’t make this payment”, bank is responsible instead (even if bank chose not to prompt you for Secure Code).

It’s equivalent of your TAC, works a bit different, but effectively it’s 2nd verification for ‘card not present’ (online) purchases. Secure Code is just reusable secondary password, it’s not one-time code sent via text, but everything else seems quite similar. There is a ton of research proving how bad this whole implementation is, but technically it is a bit more secure than not having it at all. I hate this whole concept personally.

Approving via app is next to impossible due to timings on payment network. Whole multi-point transaction path is done in less than 3s or something, it wouldn’t be enough time for user to validate it in the app.

If I missed anything, give me a shout!

[billinghamj (James Billingham)]

@Avishai

Approving via app is next to impossible due to timings on payment network. Whole multi-point transaction path is done in less than 3s or something, it wouldn’t be enough time for user to validate it in the app.

The Monzo current account 3D Secure implementation will work by approving in-app, but this won’t work for non-3DS transactions.

[Avishai (Marta)]

Ha, can you gimime some source?

I searched more on community, but probably this was most solid:
https://community.monzo.com/uploads/short-url/FWGFQVcKPF8Ur4jnsRd5ah93AZ.jpg

It doesn’t explain in-app aspect though.

Edit, I think I might have found it:

Fighting Fraud with Machine Learning

We can’t really make it any better for top ups because people top up using cards from other banks, and those banks then control the 3D Secure process. When you spend money using a Monzo card then we can control it and yes, we plan to have a much better 3DS flow than the traditional “enter 3 characters of your password”. We’ll probably just send a push notification to your phone.

[billinghamj (James Billingham)]

Online Payment Security. (Mondo vCode)

An in-app approve or deny payment feature is one of the things I’m most looking forward to building. I hope we can implement 3D secure in that way but I’m not sure. In theory we could even settle payments between a merchant with a Mondo account and a Mondo user outside of the card networks which should reduce the price of … well, everything … by about 1% and combat fraud more effectively. The user would enter their email address / mondo user ID / some identifier on the merchant page, then the m…

What are we working on? The Monzo Weekly Diary

Hi Mondonauts! Firstly, I’m sorry that this is two days late. My first day at Mondo was just over a year ago when I started a 12 week summer internship. I’ve now graduated and started full time as a security and fraud engineer. One of the guiding principles of Security @ Mondo is this: Security at the expense of user experience is a last resort, be creative and find novel solutions. I think this perfectly sums up what we are about, we will move mountains in the background to try and ensure…

It has been pretty firm for quite a while - currently no reason to believe anything has changed.

[pepe2124]

Are there any plans for a Europe expansion with Euro accounts? (Portugal here!)

[crablab (Hugh)]

@pepe2124

Are there any plans for a Europe expansion with Euro accounts?

@Feathers

If there are, they’re not public yet.

You would be best looking at N26. I don’t know if they are in Portugal but they certainly are in Europe.

[anon44204028]

or Monese or bunq could be tried too. I won’t go into details here as not promoting them, but if you need further details about either then send me a Direct Message

[pepe2124]

They operate in Portugal yes, however Monzo seems to work better.

[crablab (Hugh)]

Except… Monzo don’t operate in Portugal

[bhonobo (Patrick)]

Answer is yes, Europe is in monzo’s future expansion plans. If I’m not wrong, I remember reading elsewhere here that monzo had been internally testing EUR and USD accounts though I belive all focus now would have been on the current accounts being released at present. Hopefully you’ll get monzo in Portugal soon.

[pepe2124]

Thanks, I will wait!