Verified by Visa - failed to top up

I wanted to top up £200 on my monzo card today, but I wasn’t allowed. A verified by visa error page appeared, telling me my bank would be in touch or that I could call them. Not sure if this is something to do with 3D secure failing. I’m with Natwest. Haven’t had this problem before. Any advice?

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It sounds like this is 3D secure (Verified by Visa) failing so if you’re sure that you entered the correct details (assuming that you were asked to enter any), my guess is that you will have to speak to your bank about this.

It’s not Monzo who does the verification there, it’s your bank.

It probably wouldn’t hurt to double check with Monzo’s support team via the in-app chat tool too though, since you’ll get a quick response.

Please do let us know what the solution was for this!

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Thanks for the swift reply! I did not enter any details, so thats why I found this error strange. I will contact my bank and Monzo to see what they can do. Can I tell them to swtich off 3D secure for just Monzo top ups?

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It’s Monzo that switches it on so depending on the circumstances, they might switch it off for you.

hmm ok. The error page looked like it was coming from Natwest. Anyway contacted monzo support now so will see how that goes!

I should have explained - Monzo switch on 3D secure, then Natwest verify the details you enter, via Verified by Visa (a bit confusing), here’s Monzo’s timely explanation -

3D Secure (MasterCard SecureCode or Verified by Visa) is an additional step in the payment process that an acquiring merchant can decide to enable. If enabled, the customer will be redirected to the bank that issued the card for further authentication. This typically consists of entering several characters from a password. Transactions that go through 3D Secure can’t be charged back to the acquiring merchant because the bank that issued the card is doing their own authentication as well. Instead, liability for fraud is normally shifted to the issuing bank. Despite the benefits of 3D Secure, merchants are often reluctant to use it because of the poor user experience.

When a Monzo card is topped up with money from another debit card, Monzo is the acquiring merchant for that transaction. We don’t want to require all of our users to go through 3D Secure every time they want to top up because it’s a poor experience. Instead, our fraud engine makes a decision based on how risky it thinks a particular top up is and only puts a small percentage of top ups through 3D Secure. Our fraud engine is now sufficiently accurate that monthly financial losses are less than 0.01% of the total top up volume, compared to a high of 0.84% in June.

Text copied from this blog post.

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