Overseas Payments

Monzo Chat Travelling with Monzo
1

Hello,

I’m from England but I’m moving to LA for 9 months in a few weeks. I have just got a Monzo card and my main bank is Barclays so I have just been sending over money to my new card from the Barclays app. Will I be charged for sending over money from Barclays to Monzo if I do it in America? Don’t know whether it’s better for me to move all the money over to my Monzo card before going to make sure I don’t incur any transfer fees. Any advise would be greatly appreciated!

Lauren

2

A Monzo account and a Barclays account do the same job so, in a sense, you don’t need both. Given that both are UK Current Accounts, however, there’s no reason for anyone to charge anything when transferring money between them.

Where charges might come in is if you take out more than £200 in cash in any 30 day period outside the U.K.

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You can move money between two UK banks like normal from anywhere. It doesn’t matter if you’re not currently in the UK at the time. It’ll be just like doing it if you were in the UK.

You’d potentially incur fees if you were transferring from a UK to US account, which you’re not.

If you’re using your Monzo card in America just remember:

  • you will likely need to activate the magstrip on your card if withdrawing from US ATMs. You can do this in the Monzo app settings.
  • pay using your card or Apple/Google Pay as much as possible
  • always pay in the local currency (USD), make sure the bill is in dollars and not pounds
  • if withdrawing cash from an ATM abroad, do not use the ‘currency conversion’ prompted on screen. Always pay in or choose dollars. Monzo will automatically convert this for you and use a far better (MasterCard) exchange rate.
  • As @Feathers said, you get £200 free withdrawals from foreign ATMs every rolling 30 days (you can check in-app to see how much of this you have used). After this you’ll be charged a 3% fee per withdrawal.
  • many US ATMs will charge their own fee to withdraw cash. It’s not like the UK where the majority of ATMs do not charge a fee.
  • try and use the cash for tips only (and places that don’t accept card) and card for as much as possible as their is no charge from Monzo to use your card for payments abroad.

Have fun, @anon86523694 !

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Even if you’re only spending from you Monzo card in LA, you won’t need to pay anything to transfer money between Barclays and Monzo :slight_smile:

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Thank you all so much, really appreciate your help! And that’s saved me worrying about extra charges!

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