Just saw this on the Starling forum, which I can only assume covers the same type of transactions - I had assumed these to be expired authorisations. To reverse the authorisation is of course quite a bad failure by the acquirer…
In the case of all of these transactions, we received an explicit request from the acquirer (company the shop gets the card machine from) to reverse each transaction. We have no choice but to free up the funds and we cannot tell the difference between the reversals being sent by mistake, and all the legitimate ones we receive every night.
We are confident that an acquirer is having systems issues though, for the last 2 nights the volume of reversals has been about 7 times higher than they usually are. Source
The app also has a “nice” message on start up warning you of this.
I’ve only seen complaints on the Starling forum today - apparently there has been no communication from Starling, and many of their users found out the root of the issue from the Monzo help section.
Edit: I guess if this is the case, it’s only just been added.
Unlikely, I’d say, as you still entered into a contract to give the merchant x in exchange for y. A software failure at the merchant’s end (or their acquirer’s) won’t change that, I don’t think.
No, I got a full screen modal popup when I opened the app with a link to the explanation post in the community. Sorry, I couldn’t take a screenshot, due to “security”.
yes I saw the message about reversals when opening the app as well , now Starling have their “outage flash” - top left of screen - which links you to this message
That’s a whole lot of misunderstanding by one particular customer (she seems to make quite a few negative comments for no obvious reason).
It’s not a particularly easy topic to understand, and I can see why people are getting confused.
But… Monzo and Starling are both in the same boat - Starling did eventually put up the warning on log in, but Monzo have a much more fluid help section.
The Monzo forum is much better for issues like this due to the sheer volume of people on here - Not to mention 90% seem very happy to have issues, which they don’t blame Monzo for.
I wasn’t aware of the “New Payments Architecture” that is being developed until I stumbled across it here:
It’s mentioned towards the end of the article and says:
“One huge change on the horizon is the planned introduction of a streamlined payments system - currently called New Payments Architecture. It is designed to be operational by 2021, … In time, it should offer real-time balances and 24/7 payments, meaning - in theory - salaries could be paid on the same day each month even if this falls on a weekend. It could also mean no “pending transactions” on a bank balance.”
That sounds a bit fanciful doesn’t it? 
Maybe next time!
