I would like to transfer my ‘spending’ money for a month to my Mondo card when I get paid, rather than topping up as I go along. As this would mean a relatively large balance (~£1.5k) I’m trying to understand the risk of this.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that we should treat the Mondo card like cash. However in the event of it being lost or stolen, surely our maximum exposure is the same as with any debit card, i.e. the total of any <=£30 contactless transactions that are made before the counter trips to force a chip and pin transaction? Obviously with Mondo we also have the added advantage of being able to freeze the card from the app, assuming we still have access to our phone.
There are also the issues detailed in the FAQ about what would happen if Wirecard went into liquidation etc, but I don’t see that as very likely so am more concerned about the lost/stolen scenario.
Well that’s exactly my point. I believe that to be the case but just trying to clarify I’m not missing anything (bearing in mind the “treat it like cash” warning).
Your money isn’t protected under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) until Mondo become a bank. Depending on how risk adverse you are I wouldn’t advise putting your full salary on your card.
Mondo have made it easy to top up quickly so adding funds once a week isn’t a bad way of doing things.
To be honest, in terms of the FSCS not applying, I’m not so concerned about £1.5k (not that I would be happy to lose it obviously, but in the unlikely event that it came to that, it would not be a disaster). I’m more concerned with the notion of it being the equivalent to carrying around £1.5k cash in my wallet, which isn’t something I would generally do.
Topping up certainly is easy, I just like the idea of my Mondo balance representing my actual spending budget for the month. Up until now I’ve just been maintaining a small balance and topping up by £100 regularly, but I’m finding this a bit ‘messy’ in terms of having a good feel for what I am spending.
But yes, I take your point - doing this but on a weekly basis gets me part of the way there.
I understand what you want. Personally I would be fine with topping up £1.5 k. The main risks concerning it comes when you loose it or when wirecard liquidates. But since you can easily freeze your if you think you lost it,
If you loose the card and dont realise that you have, you could loose upto £30 on a contactless payment. The chip and pin cant be used. I’m not sure about the limit on magstripe. But i believe that the guye would be required to sign the receipt (which doesnt help in a big way). But you can always freeze the card.
As mentioned above, your main concern would be your lack of cover by FSCS if anything was to liquidate. That being said, it would seem to be incredibly unlikely at this point.
In terms of everyone mentioning contactless transactions still going through if you lost your card, Mondo has set the card to ALWAYS authorise online, even for contactless. This does mean that you may have noticed a slight delay in contactless being accepted by retailers, however the advantage is that we instantly get the transaction appearing in timelines. But the other advantage, is that if you still have access to your phone/app then you can freeze your card and even prevent these contactless transactions. And in this instance thats probably even more secure then the current UK major banks. (Or you can always call customer services on 0800 8021 456 if you’ve lost your phone too!)
That being said, I really dont think its too much of an issue to log into the app every few days/weeks, press top-up and then use Apple Pay to top up. takes about 60 seconds from start to finish.
I think the bottomline is, assuming one isn’t concerned with the lack of FSCS protection (I’m not), then there is no difference between having £Xk sat on your Mondo card and carrying a debit card for a current account with £Xk in it. Indeed, the ability to quickly freeze via the app actually makes the Mondo card safer in this regard.
Again, just to clarify I certainly don’t think the top up process is at all time consuming, it’s just the desire to have a total balance for the month to work with (probably my OCD ).
I think the “treat Mondo card as money” comes from the fact that it is a prepaid debit card. So balance is transferred to the card from an operational perspective.
If the card id is the actual account then I guess it may be tricky or impossible to transfer that balance to a substitution card.
Unless there is a Mondo account number and is number that is associated with a specific card number. In this scenario it would be easier to just assign a replacement card to the account. This would significantly decrease the risk of loosing a card.
Clause 9.3 of the Mondo T&C’s specifically mentions the issuance of a replacement card following a loss/theft. Admittedly it doesn’t specifically state that the new card would take the balance of the old one, but I think that the general discussion of liability in clause 9 certainly suggests this would be the case.
