I’ve just notice hundreds of pounds taken from my account while I was in bed sleeping! Past couple of nights. Transactions to:
TikTok
Growtentstore
Pixfizz
All the TikToks are £84.89 except one which is £212.25. All the Pixfizz and Growtentstore.com are $95.
But how could this be!! I have my card here, it’s never left me. It was by my bed as I slept. The app requires FaceID. No approvals were asked by the app. There are no notifications in my phone the payments went out. The only notice of the payments are is in my account feed on the app.
I thought Monzo to be secure I have a lot more money in pots so am really worried now.
I’ve reported them all as fraud which froze my card and now just anxiously waiting for Monzo. I better get the money back as I really don’t think I’ve done anything wrong here.
Does anyone know how such a thing can happen when I thought I need to approve all transactions?
In fact, one transaction said it was not approved as I did not approve it in time. So does that mean the others were approved? But how!?
Sounds like your details have been compromised, sadly these things do happen, not through any fault of yours as these people can use computers to generate card details pretty quick.
This can happen to anyone, at any bank, any time.
But reporting them all via the app is the best thing to do
The team will respond in due course to explain what will happen next.
Edit: in terms of notifications, your phone should’ve notified you each time a payment had moved, but if you were asleep may not have heard, or dismissed when you woke not realising.
Rest assured the fraud team at monzo will be in touch
Thanks. But there’s no notification in the list of all the notices the past few days. There’s a big list of all other apps notices.
I wouldn’t have heard it at night… I have it on do not disturb. But I’d expect to see it in the notices list when I get up but nothing there.
I’ve never paid to these websites so I’d expect an approval request seen as it’s the first time. I don’t get a request to approve to sites like Amazon, I assumed it’s because I use it often in Amazon.
This sounds bad - did you receive notifications of the debits via the app?
Monzo is secure. Unless you inadvertently compromise the security.
If you’ve reported this reported fraud to Monzo, then that’s all you can do (and should do) at this stage. People here (community) can’t help, as we’re almost all users rather than Monzo employees.
More detail needed here. You do need to approve online transactions.
If you don’t approve any transaction in time, then it won’t go ‘through’ the process and won’t be debited from your account.
@Carlo1460 has the best advice to follow for this above - I hope all works out OK
Unfortunately this is one for Monzo support to deal with. You could always mention you’ve had 0 notifications and ask them to investigate why. They’ll have more access to data than anything we can guess at here.
As you’ve discovered not all online payments require authorisation via the app. There’s plenty sites out there which don’t currently operate to the additional security features we’ve become used to.
For additional security, once you’ve got a new card from Monzo, freeze it when you’re not using it. That way if your cards ever compromised in the future, the transactions will just fail.
As said not all payments have to be authorised. But as you’ve reported it, Monzo will do their checks and if it’s as you say, they’ll refund you.
I find the “no notification” part hard to believe though. Are you sure you just haven’t missed them? Are you getting notifications when you use your card?
Definitely no notification. Yes I do get pop ups normally. That’s how I found these as I clicked a Monzo pop up. I haven’t cleared my previous days ones as they’re all still there. I can’t imagine I clicked clear on a group of Monzo ones… I check my phone when I wake up and would have seen those payments and wonder what they are but I didn’t see anything. if there were multiple pop ups (about 10 spread over 2 nights) I can’t explain how I didn’t see them
I’ve just had a pop up right now saying 2x $95 was declined so they just tried again but declined due to card being locked. I’ve made the Monzo alerts persistent now so they’ll stay on the screen.
“Band for Today” and “Boyd’s Fine Furnishing” both for that same $95 as before.
Also I don’t think it will be possible to lock the card… I’ve just had a regular monthly Apple payment declined. I subscribe to lots of services using the card like Apple, Netflix, Amazon Prime etc. all these will be declined.
Such a shame we can’t lock the card “except” to ones you choose.
Sorry to hear about what has happened. Monzo should be able to support in-app and there are some good suggestions above.
Have you considered Monzo plus and virtual cards? I only ask because you could create a virtual card, assign it to a pot and continue to spend while leaving the main card frozen (I think).
Also, in future, you could use those card details online, so if the card is ever “swiped” or compromised, you could just delete it which would prevent the payments.
I can only presume that somehow, your card details have been compromised. This happened to me with my Amazon account, I had to end up changing email addresses and a few other things so I know it can be difficult.
The only way someone could’ve got your card details from the app is if they had your face or knew your pin and could unlock the phone/app and get to them. Which is unlikely.
All payments will decline to keep your account secure. You’ve raised this with fraud so please allow them some time to look into this for you, generally within 24 hours.
You should still be able to make faster payments and send money to another account of yours if you need to.
This wont help you currently @lozcozenge (@Carlo1460 is right, you’ll have to wait for the fraud team to do their thing, and likely block the card until then).
But this would be another use case for better card controls. A number of other banks (Starling, Natwest etc) allow you to turn on/off options such as use online etc in app.
Could it be you’ve got some kind of task killer which is nuking the notifications. That’s really the only way I can think of where you’d wake up and not see any notifications.
Does your phone allow you to scroll back through all the notifications you’ve received, I know mine has that facility to do this. I rarely use it, if I’m honest. But it’s nice to know if I thought I’d missed something I can scroll back through to see what it was.
I have nothing to kill notifications. My notification list is there for the past few days showing all other apps notices, but no monzo ones. But I have enabled Monzo motifs ruin when payments are made.
But thinking about it I don’t get pop ups for ALL payments, I don’t think. Not direct debits for all my bills which come out of a pot. I’m sure I’ve had other notices like payments to Apple.
I’ll have to think about virtual cards. I’m not sure how it could help because couldn’t fraudsters guess my virtual card details the same way they must have for my physical card?
I think either they’ve guessed the details OR I’ve made a purchase online at some point (could be ages ago) and that website was hacked or saved my card details. I normally only enter card details online if I know it’s Stripe or trusted gateway but a website could be hacked to look like it.
For online payments in future a one off virtual card could be used. My other banks provide this facility. Used once then erased.
app?
- I hope all works out OK 
