Recently travelled to Germany and they don’t seem to use contactless payment. Instead for small transactions they insert your card and take payment this way which don’t require your PIN number. This caused problems As Monzo rejected this payment but it did say I could try again and asked me to authenticate the transaction. The problem with this method is I had to have every transaction declined before i could authenticate to make the purchase, which is both baffling to the store person and annoying for me.
Travelling to USA i know you can enable the mag strip for purchases but surely there can be similar method when travelling to countries that don’t have contactless yet.
I’ve been to Deutschland a few times using Monzo and they definitely widely accept contactless with no issues.
This makes it sound more like you reached your contactless limit and needed to complete a transaction via chip and pin to re-enable contactless.
1 Like
DEC 2022 UPDATE.
A lot more places are accepting card use and contactless in germany now.
My brother lives in cologne (köln) so i travel to and from there a lot and nowadays i find i can use my monzo card pretty much everywhere.
Some smaller stores still have cash only but its a much rarer thing nowadays.
The big thing to remember is when taking cash out that the majority of banks do have a withdrawal fee unless you are a member. Finding a “free atm” is basically impossible so if you are going to get cash out for a trip do it in one go… for example 1x£500 withdrawal rather than 10x£50 withdrawals.
Especially since covid a lot more places have begun to accept contactless payments so the classic “germany dont like cards” rule is starting to die out, especially in cities and in big stores 
1 Like
Can any offer an update on this? Thanks
Basically using monzo abroad now is dead easy. Germany widely accepts card now and it is rare ti ever need cash. Ive been able to use contactkess on trains and the like as well and have very rarely had any issues.
Im over there 2 to 3 times a year due to family and always use monzo with no issue nowadays. I have the max plan which allows more fee free allowances which is great but if you check your limits and if they suit your trip needs then any plan will be fine.
All in all monzo is a stress free way to spend while travelling in my book. Just renember when given the option to make transactions in local currency as this ensures you get the best conversion rate
One update from the 2022 post is that all banks seem to offer free withdrawals (except EuroNet of course).
1 Like
Thanks very useful to know