Non-UK Resident (Outside UK) / Questions

Feedback & Ideas
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Hi man, here are some short answers for you. :slight_smile:

  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 :scream:) 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.

  1. 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.

  2. 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! :slight_smile:

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 :smiley: ), 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. :smiley:

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! :slight_smile:

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