Using Monzo Flex to Withdraw Cash Abroad?

I know, but what actually happens if you do the same in the UK?

Is it chargeable?

I went through some stupid years when I was younger and withdrawing from a credit card was often a better option than a payday loan etc, however with most credit cards I paid a 3-5% cash withdrawal fee (so £500 out the wall and you’re immediately charged £515-525. Then you immediately accrue interest daily, some of the cards have a much higher rate of interest for cash withdrawal balances than purchase balances.

So this is why it’s a bad thing when lenders see it on your credit file, because it means you are an absolute loose canon with your money and either you’re in desperate straights financially or you have no idea what you’re doing financially :scream: whereas an overdraft… Hey, lots of people use them in lieu of an emergency fund and most often they are not in financial distress or paying huge amounts of interest on them. There may of course be people with large overdraft balances they are permanently stuck in and I’m sure the algorithms will flag them up alongside the credit card cash withdrawers when credit scoring someone.

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No idea. I’ve never tried. :laughing:

My friend might know, but they’re a normal British human man with a normal corporate banking job, so they’re asleep. I’ll check tomorrow and report back.

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Thanks for all your concerned replies. My question was only ever an attempt to clarify what the circumstances are around cash withdrawals on a Flex card, simply because Monzo’s website and help pages are as clear as mud (to me) on this subject. You’ll be relieved to hear that I have absolutely no intention of withdrawing any money using it. I have an excellent credit rating and absolutely no intention of jeopardising that. I always pay all my cards off in full each month and have never had the need of an arranged overdraft, much less an unarranged one. My credit utilisation is actually quite low, which according to my various weekly/ monthly credit reports can be almost as bad as using too much credit! As was originally planned, I shall just load some money in to the Monzo current account so that I get the best rate for the majority of my spending (restaurants and shopping) and use my prepaid card for withdrawing a limited amount of cash fee-free (albeit at a slightly lower rate of exchange). Thanks again.

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Generally speaking ATM withdrawal on credit card is more expensive for the ATM operator thus often credit cards incur higher fee from the ATM operator even if your bank does not charge you.

At the moment the best cards to use to withdraw cash abroad are debit cards from Monzo, Starling, Revolut, Wise, First direct, Nationwide FlexPlus. As those are likely to be accepted without fees neither by the foreign ATM nor by the issuing bank.

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Not sure how it wasn’t clear on the flex help section under eligible transactions:

It says you can’t flex cash withdrawal, but I took that to mean you couldn’t opt to pay that back over 3 months. I was trying to clarify whether or not a cash withdrawal could be done at all.

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Agreed it could be worded better.

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I think this could actually be much clearer, it’s very ambiguous. Flexing cash withdrawals from your main account and withdrawing cash from flex directly are two separate things in my book. And one has implications

I’ve tagged who I think is the right person @TheoGibson

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Cash withdrawals can’t currently be done on Flex at all.

On the credit reference agency reporting - as mentioned above cash withdrawals are reported to the CRA’s.

The other things reported to CRA’s for credit cards (beyond balance, limit, arrears, etc.) are your statement balance and monthly payment amount. Sometimes lenders will report whether you’re on a “promotional rate” but this is really rare and generally isn’t used by lenders because it’s so rare that the data’s not that reliable and so isn’t good to include in lending models.

Withdrawing cash on a credit card can be seen as a negative on your credit score - This is likely because it usually comes with a cost and so is generally used by “higher risk” customers… but like most things credit score related - it won’t be the same across all lenders and it’ll have a small impact compared to something like missing a payment (probably <5% of the impact). Monzo for example doesn’t currently differentiate based on the credit card cash withdrawals data we get from the CRA’s - we might one day but don’t today because it doesn’t improve the predictive power of our models.

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Thanks Theo for the response,

Do you think the wording is clear on this?

One thing I have noticed when buying on Amazon and when they refund part of an oder they don’t seem to know where on my Flex card to refund it to, for example if I bought a TV £1,000 and a sound bar for £200, so total price £1200, but had to cancel/refund the order of the TV for £1,000. Rather than refunding back to my Flex card transaction they instead just dump £1,000 into my main Monzo account to do with what I want, which is usually to pay off the TV manually, but I guess you could use that as a way to get cash from the Monzo Flex indirectly if you wanted to. Other than that I am not sure if you can directly withdraw cash from Monzo.

You can via Monzo but as @TheoGibson says two posts above on flex it’s a no.

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