Travelling with Monzo ✈️

In case you’re wondering, Monzo are looking for alternatives to the current ATM withdrawal limits -

The issue is that the fees to Monzo for using overseas ATM networks are quite high. So whilst it’s your own money, there is the cost of the international financial network and foreign bank charges which are being absorbed by Monzo.

That cost in some foreign ATMs being (according to Monzo) as high as £5 per transaction in some places, so it not just a matter of £1 here or there!

You can work around it by using your card as much as possible instead of getting cash out maybe?

Fair comment, I never considered that.

Although in Thailand all ATM’s charge a 200baht fee (about £5) so I’m not sure if they still charge additional fees to the credit card company.

In what way would it change do you think?

That’s not really an option in SE Asia, Cash is king and very little places accept credit cards.

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I think that even though you get charged 200baht, Monzo still gets charged the ~£5 Richard referred to. I’m not sure what the justification is (other than profit for the bank), but I’m pretty sure the card network fees are charged whether or not there is a fee to the cardholder as well.

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Come to Singapore in SE Asia, we’re more modern than the UK :wink: jokes aside, I’ve been to both Thailand and Vietnam and some restaurants in touristy areas do take card. I think some hotels might help get cash for you and you pay using debit/credit which would not reflect as an ATM withdrawal

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Any charges levied by ATM providers are independent of the charges those providers bill debit/credit card issuers. Indeed, ATM with higher cardholder charges also tend to have higher fees for the card issuers (source, internal memorandum Sabadel 2015)

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Roadtrip to Sweden from England (With Monzo)


Rooooooooad triiiiiiiip
Starting with a topped up :monzo: card and everything for the week packed on to my motorbike :motorcycle: I headed up to Harwich with a quick stop at south mimms services for fuel (#1 GBP) and some home brewed coffee from my lovely wife then back on the road to catch the ferry to Holland. PS there is nothing you can do about helmet hair at this time of night - nothing to see here - move along. Cheeky beverage and wine gums (the high life!) had my first Euro payment of the trip - no fees here: this is Monzo!

Arrived in Holland at 06:00 and headed east for my first stop and fill up (#3 Euro), some half cold coffee and onwards to the border…

…until I got called by work and needed to stop for an hour and look at trees and Holland for a bit; and THEN i got back on the road to the border, but then needed to top up for fuel for me (#4 Euro) and THEN, finally I got back on the road to the border a few km away…

…which I completely missed :man_facepalming: as there were no checks, tolls or really many signs (due to that pesky European freedom of movement) and didn’t stop until I hit the outskirts of Osnabrück, Germany.

The weather was pretty awesome by this point (and getting quite warm too), so I grabbed a bite to eat and headed back out as soon as my legs would let me.

All the way to Hamburg for the next fuel stop (#5 Euro), I’d run out of shrapnel aka coins for the toilets but my Monzo card came to the rescue once more. Topped up my Monzo card (just in case signal got patchy further north) and headed back out on the road (one of those bits with no speed limit :rocket: )

Finally we make it Lübeck, Northern Germany. Fuel in the tank, time to kill - so a detour on some skinny, twisty roads sounds nice, right? :wink:


And my favourite picture from the trip, right outside Rostock:

One more top up (#6 Euro) before a weird lap of Rostock (the route to the ferry is…odd) before an overnight to Trelleborg in Sweden and paying for dinner (#7 Swedish Kronor) and here my Monzo story ends - nearly 1000 miles later (I did not take the most direct route) I’ve got my bike (and me too) from England to Sweden and some great photos to go with it. Thanks Monzo!

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I haven’t used my Monzo card for a few days, but each day I check my balance, it depletes by roughly 5p. Does anyone know why this is happening and if it’ll continue? Thanks!

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:scream_cat: That’s not as expected, Monzo doesn’t have any ‘recurring’ fees and definitely no daily fees! You should get in touch with Support via in-app chat and ask for help, especially if you don’t see any charges appearing daily in your transaction feed - but I assume you wouldn’t be asking if you were seeing 5p transactions in the app appearing every day. :smiley:

Have you done foreign currency transactions last few days and the final settled amount is higher due to exchange rate changing between initial provisional presentment and final authorised transaction?

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Barbados Esso service station on main road just south of Holetown is magstripe ATM operated by RIBC so does not work.

You can enable Magstripe ATM support in the app, just go into ‘Settings’ and enable it. It will automatically turn off after 24 hours though. :grinning:

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Just been travelling around Asia and the card worked great! The user friendly app interface is fantastic and notifications are instant. Switching between curreny without having to carry cash is so much easier. The holiday round ups at the end are also really useful to keep track of spending!

Great work! Loads of my friends and family are now ordering their own!

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