Pre Approval

[Eman1604 (Eren Ismail)]

Could you introduce the idea of a pre approval process?

For example, if you regularly shopped online at Asda or you regularly made payments to Google Play, rather than having to approve each time, you could just choose to pre approve all transactions from a specific retailer.

Thanks!

[Ordog]

No. It’s not Monzos or your choice. It’s the place you’re shopping at that decides when and how frequent they ask for approval.

[Alexxxxx (>50 categories pls)]

So. I know it isn’t up to Monzo.

But, Amex has a system which allows you to do this. You can add retailers to your safe list or something when you check out and get asked for 3DS/2 factor approval. Disclosure - I’ve never actually done it but my understanding is you would then never be asked to confirm with that retailer again.

So (purely academic point) but maybe something could be implemented at the MasterCard level, if not the Monzo one?

[Ordog]

It’s likely a liability shift.

Amex being the huge financial conglomeration that they are, can likely afford to take larger risks and take the hit if things go wrong because they have the funds and resource to do so.

[awjdean]

@Ordog

It’s not Monzos or your choice.

Not sure this is correct.

Although some transaction types have to always go through 3DS, this isn’t the case for most transaction types.

It has been mentioned on the forum a few times that Monzo have, and are improving, processes to automatically let through transactions that have a low risk of fraud. Here’s an example:

3DSecure for ALL online/ecommerce/CNP transactions

Catching up on this thread now. Just a comment that as of September 2021, every single ecommerce transaction needs to go through 3DS, or else we must decline it as per SCA regulation. This date has been pushed back about 3 times by now… This is not 100% true, since we may choose not to challenge the customer based on low transaction value and/or low fraud risk. If you really want to get technical, feel free to read this document from the European Banking Authority. My team’s job was…

They also seem to be working with some companies (e.g., Amazon) to approve transactions automatically - my guess would be that Amazon sends some sort of account identifier through with the transaction info so Monzo can check if that Amazon account has been used to buy stuff before.

---

As far as I understand the liability stuff, these are the options:

• Merchant requests 3DS approval ==> Monzo choose to automatically approve it (without 3DS) ==> Monzo liable if transaction is fraud.

• Merchant requests 3DS approval ==> Monzo requires 3DS from customer ==> Merchant is liable (not 100% about this - it may depend on the circumstances). Monzo is liable in this case (thanks @arthur-ceccotti).

• Merchant does not request 3DS approval ==> Monzo wouldn’t require 3DS from customer ==> Merchant is liable (I think with 3DS2 all online merchants have to require 3DS, but maybe that’s only for EU(/UK)-based merchants or something).

@arthur-ceccotti is probably the best person to ask some of this stuff.

---

So Monzo do seem to be working on this stuff @Eman1604 .

[aCCount]

So you’re saying it is Monzo’s choice now?

[arthur-ceccotti]

@awjdean

Merchant requests 3DS approval ==> Monzo requires 3DS from customer ==> Merchant is liable (not 100% about this - it may depend on the circumstances).

We are actually liable here. Apart from that, the rest was mostly flawless. Nice one!

[arthur-ceccotti]

Yes and no. Right now we can only challenge you (ie. request that “pre-approval”) if the merchant asks for it first. As of September Monzo can decline ecommerce transactions that did not go through 3DS, thus forcing merchants to request it. Got it?

[arthur-ceccotti]

So… It’s not Monzo’s choice right now, but as of September it will be