I am livid,
Tried to purchase a vehicle yesterday at 6pm and had the payment go into review .
Was standing at the persons home up until the point I had to go look accommodation for last night at a hefty price.
Up this morning for checkout at still in review. No one came seem to give me a time scale or a solid answer for what is going on!
Have been on to the chat and complaints and just seems to be falling on deaf ears. Surely there is something that can be done
Hi @Michaelarmour & welcome 
I suspect the intended payment exceeded your account limits? (example below)
The important bit is at the end of the screenshot: if you want to pay more than your given limits, youāll need to request it in advance.
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I have the same limits as that, yet when I tried to pay someone last week Ā£3K I also had to wait for it to get reviewed, Thankfully mine only took 30 minutes. Itās embarrassing stood in someoneās house making a video to be reviewed then waiting, not knowing how long it will be. I left Starling for this reason, tried to buy a motorbike for Ā£6k and they had to review it first. Had to cancel it, move the money to my Lloyds account and then pay them. Banks really need to start trusting customers with their own money.
Itās not about trust, their role is to safeguard your money. This is clearly a large amount being sent to someone youāve not had dealings with before, so you can see why it might raise a red flag. They donāt know the context behind it.
A quick check to make sure everythingās in order is all it takes. Better that than letting every transaction go through that could potentially be a fraudster that wipes out all of your money.
Itās not āquickā though, is it? Thatās the problem.
The holding for review and extra checks make sense. Why canāt this be completed more quickly though? Customers shouldnāt have to suffer because Monzo has chosen to inadequately resource certain parts of their business.
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The mechanism is in place to request this before hand
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Thatās for raising limits. This is about payments being held for review, which can be for any payment amount, including those under your limits.
In the example above, the person sent Ā£3,000 and it was held for review. This is hardly a large sum of money and is well under any default payment limits.
If you are going to hold payments, ensure you have the staff (or automated technology instead) to review and make a decision very rapidly, that is my point.
I totally read the sums involved and didnāt miss that bit.. Honest.
Ā£3000 is a huge sum of money to me.
Automating this would be good because staffing is unpredictable as you might get loads more requests than usual on a day when a lot of staff are off sick. Always the way
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And to a lot of people, Iām sure. I meant from the perspective of the bank though 
Automation is the way forward, for sure. I am surprised a person still has to look at these things. Hopefully this can be improved over time by Monzo.
Iāve never had issues moving large sums with Nationwide or HSBC for example. If a legacy bank is able to make payment risk decisions that are invisible to the customer, then Monzo should be able to, given their technical prowess.
That said, I have had similar issues with Lloyds, so itās not just a fintech thing.
Define quick, because the title of this thread says itās taken more than 18 hours, and I certainly donāt think thatās quick.
I had a recent one where they took about 4 hours to release a payment I made to a new Chase saver account in my own name. Thatās really not acceptable to me and has made me think twice about keeping any large balance in Monzo.
I realise now that if Iād sent it to my Chase current account that Iād paid into before, that would probably have gone through instantly and then I could move into the saver on the Chase side, but I really shouldnāt have to think about how to beat their review system.
I agree ā that probably wasnāt the best way for me to phrase it.
I was mainly responding to the suggestion that there shouldnāt really be any checks or restrictions, and that it all just comes down to a lack of trust.
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I donāt use Fintechs other than Revolut (who are quicker and donāt do as much of the āyou are an idiot and we must protect youā act) for these purchases, HSBC or Lloyds where you can show the person you are on the phone and arenāt messing them around waiting for the phone app - even though I just never get those checks with highstreet banks, they actually seem to trust you with your own money.
Had 1h+ holds with Monzo and Starling, both were on Saturdays so less staff I guess, but still never relying on either for anything relatively time intensive / important again
I still canāt name a friend or personal experience that have had transfers blocked like this where a highstreet bank was involved - Iām sure it happens (maybe for larger amounts?) - but they seem much more leniant and reliable
I tried it with Starling when buying a Puppy for Ā£1k, which took over an hour, flow was:
- Submit payment request in app
- Window pops up with a question flow, did you see the item on social media, etc
- 1hr later, payment rejected, outbound transfers & card blocked, no inbound contact from them
- Contact live support (and spam it, honestly) which eventually led the agent to say they would have someone from the Payments Team contact me after before saying they couldnāt do anything
- Payment team tells me to make the payment again after asking NO more questions
- Payment rejected again
- Go through the same process again
- Third time was the charm, it worked
Lloyds once froze a payment I made to Wise, but gave me a number to call, and they actually answered really quickly. After a few questions the payment was released. It was annoying at the time, but having later experienced a Monzo block, the Lloyds process was amazing.
However that Lloyds experience was a few years ago, back when providing good customer service was still something companies valued. Itās probably not as good anymore.
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