I usually go to tesco after work to grab something to eat, which I did yesterday. And today I’ve been charged the exact same amount without leaving the house?
It was only a small purchase of £3.25, so I’m not sure I should bother to go through the process to get it back if it’s going to be a lot of hassle, but I’m worried it might do it again to larger purchases?
You could be able to tap on the first transaction in the app and get it refunded automatically.
It’s just one of the quirks of Tesco’s acquirer 
This has just happened to me. I went into store and they told me it’s not Tesco that is the problem it’s Monzo? So I’ve raised a dispute and I’m just waiting to hear back. Very frustrating
Don’t believe everything you hear (including this 
) and do your own research by having a search on here and you’ll see where the issue really is 
In short, Tesco create a new payment request instead of collecting on the original authorization. But I can’t imagine a store worker being able to look at transaction data so they’ll just fob you off and blame someone else.
Here is the solution:
I’ve had two double charges from Tesco on my Monzo account and chased up a refund today on both and was told it’s a Monzo issue and that Tesco will give me a security code which I then have to contact Monzo with to get a refund on both unlawfal payments. Tesco said they’s call me back to update me on the refund process but I’ve heard nothing from them. I’ve now removed Monzo from the Tesco Pay+ app and use revolut.
When this happened previously I spoke to Tesco and they refunded the duplicate payment without me having to contact Monzo.
According to the news article below it’s Tescos payment system that has the error.
And it seems that it was more widespread a few months back too.
Tesco lied.
Monzo don’t proactively send your money anywhere. They act on instructions received. This means Tesco managed to instruct Monzo to pay then twice.
Frontline customer service staff who don’t have the visibility of complex issues involving payment systems will lie to get you off the call as soon as they can. From their view they may not even realise they’re lying, because they’re just following their scripts which say it can’t be Tesco’s problem (likely it’s just not covered - not covered? Not our problem).
It’s the same sort of buck-passing behaviour that comes from companies that sent you to the manufacturer if something you’ve bought has broken; it’s their responsibility per law, but it’s easier for them to lie and send you to the manufacturer instead.
I’m really finding this frustrating at the moment. I’ve just had another 2 transactions duplicate today 
. I even had one the other week which after waiting 8 days for the original one to refund, it ended up settling too, so I actually got charged twice (as both transactions completed) and had to dispute one of the transactions.
This is a Tesco and their card acquirer sadly as @Ordog has said. We have tried resolving these issues but their acquirer doesn’t seem to fix the issues no matter how often we request this through Mastercard or directly to Tesco themselves.
Some Tesco stores are aware of the fact that they present for the payment under a new authorisation code (causing a double payment) and will try and help you and refund it quicker. Others will just blame us and we need to collect enough evidence to raise a dispute. I’d always recommend getting a receipt from Tesco if this happens so we can refund you as quickly as possible if this error does occur.
As for why you see this more with Monzo instead of other banks is down to us showing authorisations instantly in your account, this means that while the payment is still pending you’ll see 2 payments. This should reverse in 8 days.
Hope this helps 
I get that the issue isn’t actually caused by Monzo, but the the negative result of the issue is experienced in the Monzo app.
I think that if Monzo are unable to get WorldPay to fix the issue with Tesco transactions, then there must be a way that Monzo can mitigate the issues by improving the UX here somehow.
If Monzo receive an authorisation code from Tesco to settle a transaction which doesn’t match a pending transaction authorisation code, then surely they would know there is a mismatch?
I wouldn’t have thought there would ever be a legitimate circumstance where you’d buy something in Tesco and the transaction would be put through for an immediate completion without a pre-authorisation?
I have zero knowledge of these things clearly but I would have thought there would be some way for Monzo to intelligently match up these mismatches instead of displaying a duplicate transaction? Maybe that isn’t possible 🤷
Because I’ve had so many duplicates in the past few weeks, it’s become very difficult keep a track of the duplicates/refunds. Part of this is that the refund transaction doesn’t tell you which transaction is refunded, and the original transaction just shows as pending forever instead of updating as refunded. I have had to use tags to keep a track of things but even that hasn’t been perfect.
As I mentioned before, I had to raise a dispute a few days ago because instead of refunding after 8 days, one of them completed. Within 24 hours of raising a dispute, a refund came through, so I thought it was as a result of me raising the dispute. However, yesterday I got a notification saying my dispute is now in progress, and at the same time another refund of the same value hit my account, so I think I’ve been refunded twice for the same transaction now.
This is what I mean that it’s becoming difficult to keep track of, as I cannot determine myself exactly which transaction a refund is for, other than it matches the value. When you click on an open dispute, it doesn’t even link back the transaction in question, so if you happened to have more than one of the same value, it could be very confusing.
I contacted support in the app on Monday, and was told someone would get back to me within 8 hours by a front line cop, but it’s Wednesday now and I’m still waiting.
I know Starling have a lot less customers than Monzo, but Starling also do instant notifications I believe? And doing a quick Twitter search I am not noticing any Starling customers raising this, but numerous Monzo customers over the past few days.
Sorry that’s so long winded, but I just have to believe that there’s a way Monzo could make the UX of these data errors caused by WorldPay/Tesco better.
My impression of the problem is that Tesco is presenting two different “pending/pre-auth” requests - but only authorising one of them later (leaving the other one to time-out).
I don’t think so? If they submitted 2 different pre-auths then surely you’d get 2 pending transactions initially, not one?
What you’re asking for won’t happen, because what you’re asking Monzo to do is essentially ‘break’ their UX for one merchant.
It would also make the experience even worse for people who have low balances, because the duplicate Tesco presentment will still be ringfenced, so they may have their card declined and not know why.
If I’m reading the post from a Monzo staff member correctly, the problem can also occur with other banks but is less visible because they don’t show authorisations - however, it sounds like the available balance on the account would still go down.
For me, I think the best thing Monzo could do is have a “Tesco are dicks” help article, so that if someone touches the “something wrong” button on a Tesco transaction, they’re given the article to read first so they don’t have to wait for a COp.
I’ve *touch wood* not been double charged by Tesco yet and we shop there a lot. So it perhaps would be a bit overkill too.
Always using the Tesco Pay+ app, linked to Monzo behind the scenes, seems to have thus far protected me from all of this. Long may that continue
Yep agree with this, just a note on the transactions explaining the issues would help.
I don’t quite understand the Monzo staff member reply though with regards to the way they show pending/authorisations in app. In the app you see the pending transaction, with a separate authorisation/completed transaction later in the day. Don’t most banks now show pending transactions in either the app or on the desktop site straight away? The limited banks I’ve used in the last few years (Lloyds, Halifax, Starling, TSB and Santander) all seem to show pending transactions so you would notice duplicate transactions on these as well. Or have I misunderstood?
With the Monzo/Tesco issues, we just use a different card now having been stung on personal and joint accounts quite a few times. Haven’t had a problem since.
This might be one of those cases where I’ve not used my legacy bank in such a long time that I might be slightly wrong with how some banks are displaying these now. But in the case of RBS (NatWest) you have your ‘available’ balance and your actual balance.
Your pending payment remove from your available balance but you are still allowed to go over this as long as your actual balance is high enough.
At Monzo we hide this balance behind the scenes so while payments are pending you still get the benefits of interest (not being charged OD fees, etc) but you can’t spend this money.
Tesco’s terminals are coming to Monzo asking if you have enough money in your account so we set that amount aside then they are collecting the payment in an incorrect way leading to a second presentment. Literally as @SouthseaOne has said the app is different in how it processes payments and personally I haven’t had any issues with it either (although I also have never had a duplicate presentment despite using Tesco as my local store)
We are always looking into these issues and working with Tesco, Mastercard & WorldPay to try and make sure that no one gets these issues in the future.
I know it might seem pointless but if you report it to COps when it happens we might not be able to help straight away but it really helps our teams know how big an impact this issue has and we can use this to push for this to be fixed as soon as possible with Mastercard.
edit: I’m double checking with our engineers the specifics about Monzo Plus/Premium interest I will update this post when I have a clear answer
Hi Kyle, appreciate the reply. It makes things slightly clearer and I get that its tesco’s fault when completing transactions, so not blaming monzo.
Both Lloyds and TSB now show one balance, which is your available balance less any pending transactions. There’s now a section that shows what your pending transactions are, so its a lot easier to see if you have duplicate payments. I CASS’d my Santander account a while ago, so no idea what they show anymore. As for starling, most of us know what they show.
As for Tesco, wasn’t really an issue when my meal deal lunch on my personal account was duplicated, but a bit of a headache when it was our weekly shop on the joint.
Hey Kyle!
I’m not sure the bit about getting “the benefits of interest” is true.
I had a pending payment that took a long time to reverse earlier this year. After a series of extremely long exchanges and a complaint (where it seemed that a succession of folk didn’t know how Monzo systems worked) it appeared that you don’t get interest paid on pending transactions if you have a Plus or a Premium account.
The explanations for overdrafts were exceptionally unclear, with wrong worked examples provided, but ultimately it seemed that pending transactions don’t count towards your overdraft.
I’m all here for instant notifications and balance updates, but those with Plus and Premium should note that this sort of issue will have a financial detriment on them due to Monzo policy (which doesn’t appear to be consistent with treatment of overdrafts).
It’s left a bit of a bad taste in the mouth, to be honest.
I’m not sure which world you live in, but it’s not the real one