I had no idea Mondo did not charge FX fees; would’ve skipped going to M&S FX for Dirhams if I did. Looking forward to using Mondo in UAE and India over the next few weeks.
Also, @rdingwall, great write-up, thank you!
Wouldn’t it be possible to list the percentage of currency lost against the actual rate. Also, what about displaying competitor’s rates.
Ok thanks. I know mastercard is a good rate but it have to manually calculate how much i am loosing off the actual mid market rate.
For Euro
Mastercard: 1.276943
Mid Market: 1.26680
It turns out that Mastercard is about 0.8% over the actual mid market today. Weird.
Is this because Mastercard use the closing spot rate which was last recorded by Bank of England on Thursday as 1.2771?
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/boeapps/iadb/Rates.asp?TD=9&TM=Jun&TY=2016&into=GBP&rateview=D&POINT.x=13&POINT.y=12
(Not sure why it doesn’t post friday’s… Explain)
Firstly, Richard Dingwall’s write up was excellent. Holly heck, thanks for all that info so simply explained.
Secondly, I’d like to comment again regarding support for in-app currency swapping between major currencies. I am an American who is studying for a PhD in the UK, with family in the USA, Egypt, the Netherlands and Denmark. When I moved to the UK I started banking with Lloyds because their domestic use terms were really great, but have found recently that using my debit card internationally costs an absolute fortune if you’re not careful. Mondo is an incredible product for me because it helps me easily manage my spending at home, and it allows me to get around a lot of the hassle of dealing with Lloyds when traveling, regardless of where I go.
That said, I would be crazy not to check out the competition - so I recently stumbled upon Revolut. Revolut isn’t really a bank, but they allow you to top up a card similar to Mondo, and then use their app to swap between USD, EUR, and GBP instantaneously at the inter-bank rate so you know exactly what you are getting when you swap. It’s slick, and being able to transfer your funds to contacts who use Revolut basically means I can instantly exchange money with any of my family in the appropriate currency at a definitive, very low exchange rate.
The world is only getting smaller and smaller, and while I may be something of a fringe case at the moment, international lifestyles are becoming the norm for people who are interested in a product like Mondo very quickly. The Master Card exchange rate isn’t bad, but considering how smooth everything else about the Mondo experience is, it’s a little odd to see your expenditures change slightly after the couple of days it takes to properly process international transactions, which wouldn’t be the case if I were able to change into an appropriate currency before the money is even spent. Other than the in-app currency swaps, I don’t see anything Revolut does that Mondo can’t do better, and I think implementing a feature like this would pretty much make you the best banking solution for people looking to making banking abroad as easy as possible.
There’s my pitch.
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Hi Jonas,
I write in relation to the FX fees in the Transactions abroad or in a foreign currency thread of a few years.
_Would you be able to elaborate further on your comment ‘we don’t charge FX fees and give you the official MasterCard exchange rate at the time’
Is the above still the case? And, is there not a charge to Monzo? If this is the case is it sustainable?
Maybe you could contrast that with how a ‘classic’ bank would work that transaction?
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Does this help answer your questions, Daniel? Scroll about halfway to see the different between a ‘classic’ bank and Monzo. Apologies that Tristan already posted it further up the thread but it’s worth a re-read.
MasterCard use quite a fair mid-range fx rate each day. Basically it does cost Monzo to do this, but that cost is factored into their business model. Fingers crossed it is sustainable.
a belated thank you richard!
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Here’s some more info, to answer your question - there is a cost to Monzo for all this & Tom shared has some insight into the implications of this since you posted the question here -
& here -
Typically the banks charge you to make purchases in other currencies, a foreign useage fee & an ATM withdrawal fee. So enough to cover their costs & then some 
There’s more info on those charges here -
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/overseas-card-charges
An ancient thread but closest one to add this to.
Noticed today that the spending abroad notification seems to have changed (in a good way), including a link to the community thread for that specific country:
Tbf this might have been the case for a while now, but I only noticed it today.
Also seems to list the places you’ve spent so far on that trip in one place:
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