Wouldn’t this guide be much better as a webpage?
The blog mentions issues paying in Portugal and a webpage would allow for it to be available in Portuguese automatically which may help solve some of these issues.
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I used my Monzo card in flight on EasyJet on Saturday 19th May and it was charged to my card on Monday 21st - but if I remember the flight attendant had to check first with her in-flight supervisor before she’d accept it.
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Sad to see they still don’t trust the machines. The card terminal is in a way better position to tell which cards should be accepted.
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Here’s a problem I encountered, which - to be completely fair - I think was due to the way the Monzo card works, and my understanding at the time, and I think Monzo could probably do something to drive a better outcome in future:
I used my card to buy food on an internal flight in the Philippines recently. They didn’t process the transaction in real time, and first attempted to charge it a week later later, by which time I was back in the UK.
When they attempted to withdraw the funds, Monzo declined it. They then tried again, three or four times in a row 2-3 days apart. When I contacted support at the time to ask them to allow the payment, I was told that for the manual transaction to go through, I would have had to enable Magstripe ATMs (which I’d thought was only for ATMs). By then, it was too late, they’d stopped trying. If I’d understood “Magstripe ATMs” was also for manually processed ones, i would have known what to do.
If the airline had similar issues with several Monzo customers over time, I could understand why they might feel some justification in refusing Monzo cards (not to mention blacklisting me!). It was only around £4, but I don’t like feeling like I haven’t paid my dues.
A further point of worth noting: each time the transaction was attempted and and declined, I got a notification the transaction to say this, followed by a Welcome to the Philippines notification, followed by an Enable Magstripe ATM message.
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it is a shame you can not click on a declined authorization to approve it!
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I think being able to reauthorise a decline is a great idea. Maybe be worth mentioning to see if monzo can do it.
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I love this idea. 
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Yep, a flight attendant on a Norwegian flight from Spain to the UK refused to even try my Monzo card just 2 weeks ago.
wow. never thought of merchants just flat out refusing to try the card. that’s fun 
. Apart from the occasional “that’s a bright card” I’ve not really had any issues, plus I’m using Apple Pay with my watch now, so I’ve needed the physical card even less.
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Yes - my examples were also Norwegian
I think sorting this in-flight acceptance issue should be a priority for Monzo now. If airlines are blacklisting and sending memos out about Monzo then this could cause an issue to a lot of users who rely on Monzo for their travel. Monzo was picked up by a large number of users based on its fee-free use abroad.
I hope @Louis.cox @Clee can look into this and please also confirm that when should ATM magstripe option be enabled for other than ATM use.
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I’ll ask my friend at easyJet to inform me if there are any further memos sent out regarding this.
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do they post them out by Air Mail?
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Carrier pigeon.
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Bit of a weird one, but buying tickets at my train station outside of Manchester doesn’t work with Apple Pay but does with the card. They do accept Apple Pay, so this seems strange to me. Anyway, hopefully it will be sorted soon.
Hey! The Easy Jet issue is being treated as a priority, and has been escalated to Mastercard. I think that enabling magstripe will do so for all transactions, not just ATMs.
From reading the post above regarding the airline, it sounds like this was an offline magstripe transaction. Offline transactions can come through weeks later, as magstripe is off by default, it would be quite difficult to coordinate a window to turn it on in order for it to go through.
@Justin Thanks for raising this, I will chat with our payment engineers to see if there is a way of avoiding this in future 
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Airlines are odd. On one Ryanair flight I was using a business card and the two different terminals on the same plane were configured differently so one rejected a transaction but the other one accepted a transaction 
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That’s great news! It would be great if it was fixed by Monday (just saying 
).
I guess I could use Curve and they’d never know?
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Louis, thank you for responding to my post. I think there were several issues here:
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Being unaware that Enable Magtripe ATM was a misnomer, and actually applied to all magstripe transactions
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Not being completely clear that when magstripe is enabled, it’s not the date of the transaction that matters, but the date that the airline (or other merchant) actually gets round to posting it
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Not knowing when the transaction would be posted by the airline, so in theory needing to enable magstripe again and again until the transaction is posted
When abroad, travelers don’t always have access to data services every day. I was in parts of Asia last year where there was no wifi and data roaming charges were exorbitant. However, whenever I was away from data for more than 24 hours, I couldn’t then use my Monzo card to withdraw cash. A more customer-focused approach might be to allow customers to enable magstripe for several days at a time, or enable magstripe until you detect my location is no longer in this country (though I’m aware the longer magstripe is left switched on, the greater the risk to Monzo - so a balance is probably desirable).
Any thoughts?
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Indeed I find it very annoying that there is no option do that! I don’t want to head into my app every day while I’m on holiday - I want to enjoy my holiday.