The Monzo Current Account Preview

So today i went to Halifax to take out some cash monies and was greeted with the language selection and there maybe a charge, went back to the machine 2 hours later and the same thing happend.

I’ve found this as well. Every time I use a cashpoint it presents a language screen…it might be because it doesn’t fully recognise the card number but I’m not 100% sure how it decides when to present the screen

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You can accept the fee as it’s not charged/passed on. Something I think Monzo are still working on removing.

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I think it’s just based on the card’s BIN (bank identification number - the first 4/6 digits of your card number) - ATM operators whitelist local BINs and anything not in there automatically gets the language prompt and extra fee warning - there isn’t actually a way for the ATM to know for sure if there will be a fee or not.

This will resolve itself as Monzo gets more popular and ATM operators update their whitelists.

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You have to pay for it on the CA, I have had it happen to me.

You’re charged if the machine owner charges you but not if it says “Your bank may charge you” which is what I thought this was discussing?

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In fairness, sometimes the machines can be a little unclear on this (presumably because they don’t like to advertise that they are charging you for the privilege!)

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My rule of thumb is expect to be charged at a crappy little corner shop with a machine run by what appears to be a private company. So I only use bona fide bank ATMs. It’s not difficult to distinguish between them.

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There’s a separate thread discussing the ATM language and fee messages when using the current account cards.

Neither of these are quite right. It is apparently because ATM operators assume a MasterCard is foreign or a credit card, since until now there have been no few UK-issued MasterCard debit cards.

If anyone has any further info on this issue, it would be great to add it to that thread. :wink:

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Was not going to comment on this topic, but just wanted to say that my legacy bank is the Clydesdale Bank and they issue Mastercard debit cards and have done so for several years. No questions asked at ATM it just works like a debit card. I initially had loads of issues when they first changed from maestro, retailers treating it as a credit card rather than a debit, taken a good few months for it to settle down. So would assume it’ll be same for Monzo.

I was fairly sure my RBS debit cards were MasterCard back in the 1990s? Or Maestro, perhaps? Hazy memory :thinking:

My mistake, I wrote the post too quickly. I should have said “few” UK-issued MasterCard debit cards, not “no”. Now corrected.

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Out of interest, why do Monzo use MasterCard and not Visa for their debit cards?

Apologies if this has been covered before…

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Mastercard are certainly more popular with new entrants which says something about how much easier they are to deal with. Also if travelling abroad your POS transactions get a very slightly better exchange rate on average with Mastercard than Visa.

as do Handelsbanken.

Paul (co-founder and deputy CEO) explained this last year:

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Apparently, it really would not: Millions of high-security crypto keys crippled by newly discovered flaw | Ars Technica

I guess this demonstrates the issue with bad implementations of ID cards - the scale makes it almost a national crisis. (The actual issue in this case is with a bad propitiatory library which was implemented in ID cards)

Blimey, I wouldn’t trust our government to implement ID cards here. They can screw up just about anything, especially if computers/IT are involved!

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KI’m in I’m in I’m in I’m in!!! Honestly waited over a year but Monzo have delivered what they’ve promised. So far so good and loving the pots. Now just to figure out how to transfer money quicker like Apple Pay! :star_struck::boxing_glove:

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The Current Account Preview has now closed and all Current Account customers should now be using the real thing!