Not often but sometimes I need a lot of cash. This is usually to pay for tradesmen but it can be other things.
Recently I bought a car. It cost 5k and the guy was adamant he would only take cash. Other times tradesmen will offer a discount to be paid in cash. This can run to thousands of pounds so is well worth it.
In the case of the car after looking at the vehicle and agreeing the purchase we went to the nearest HSBC (where I currently bank) and withdrew 5k in cash. This was all fine and it was easy - just turn up with debit card in hand and ID.
My question is could I have done this with my Monzo full current account debit card? Would I have been charged a fee or refused?
Are there any issues withdrawing (say) £10k in cash to pay a painter or builder? Could I do that at any bank?
As Monzo has no branches, I bet the suggestion will be to transfer it to another bank and withdraw it through them if you need a sizeable amount of money. I seriously doubt they hold cash at Monzo head office or would go and get you £5,000 - £10,000 due to the dangers (and insurance) of them holding such an amount. It would be interesting if they did issue bankers drafts when they don’t do cheques.
Almost every bank does not allow you to withdraw more than a small amount via ATM’s per day (usually up to £1,000). I doubt Monzo would lift that limit due to anti fraud measures. The recent Taylor Review suggested a ban on paying cash in hand to tradesman such as a builder, gardener, window cleaner or childminder etc. Whilst it isn’t law, it could soon be so too. And no, I wouldn’t ask for £5,000 in cash. I would ask for a £5,000 faster payment. Banks would query me putting £5,000 in cash into my bank account due to anti-money laundering measures as there is no paper trail.
Either way, regardless of what you want to do with the money afterwards and who is paying their taxes and who isn’t.
The question is how do I withdraw a bunch of money in my account, like we would of done with a legacy bank.
As @awn has mentioned, @alexs will probably be able to pluck something official that has been mentioned, until then I would advise using the search feature to the best of your ability and ignore the overseas cash withdrawal threads to find it yourself.
I’m sure I have seen somewhere before that, ‘things’ are being worked on and that’s all they had at the moment.
TL;DR The short answer is right now, this cannot be done. You’ll be told a million times transfer to a legacy bank and visit your branch.
Thing is, if your buyer IS dodgy, and transfer funds from a flagged account you’ll find your account blocked sharpish anyway, and your financial life pretty much ruined.
I agree. Seems a bit of a backward way of doing things??
If I do the full current account switch, my legacy bank account gets closed automatically. So this would actually involve me opening a new legacy bank account just in case I can’t get the full range of services from Monzo?
The discussion should be about how I can get cash out in large sums from Monzo. Not about why the seller of a car wants cash. Cash is final, cheques get canelled, bankers drafts the same. I’m not sure people trust PayPal or bank transfers due to scams. But cash is irreversible.
It looks like it falls back to a legacy bank. I can’t believe the advice will be to leave one open just in case as some point you may need a service they offer, and Monzo can’t?? Cash may be old world/old fashioned but lots of people still want to use it.
It wouldn’t be my fault if they sent it to the wrong account. I would check it arrived before I handed the car over. Myself, I’ve never sent money to a wrong account and don’t ever plan too. I always do a £1 check first then send the amount.
Equally, I can also prove I am not dodgy. While that account is frozen, I will just use my second current account and take funds from my premium bonds.
Oops corrected!
You should always have a spare current account incase you are frozen out of your main one or there is a bank fault like Natwest/RBS had. Martin Lewis recommends it, and he knows something about money. If I ever needed £5,000 in cash (which I doubt) I’d rather get it from a securish high street bank branch than a bank with no branch or a hole in the wall somewhere random.
Monzo don’t and won’t have branches so unless they partner up with legacy banks or the post office we won’t have access to large amounts and even if they did there would more than likely be a fee for this service.
Good luck with using ANY other bank account. You’ll find a money laundering suspicion or CIFAS marker spreads through your financial life pretty quickly. Can be a Kafaesque nightmare, I believe, where no bank is able to tell you why your accounts are being closed.
Thats a really interesting point. It’s my money, and if I want to withdraw it all, be it to stuff my mattress, or buy a car, then it shouldn’t be up to a bank to stop me.
A really interesting conundrum.
We have two mobile-only banks in the UK. Starling has a paying-in arrangement with Nat West. I don’t know that Monzo have such an arrangement in the pipeline.
Whichever way you slice it, only a high street bank or a building society provide over the counter services (unless you’re into dodgy borrowing). On that basis, it’s a bit of a reality check around the dumping of a legacy bank.
I’ve noticed though on both forums, there’s been chat around setting up one-off ATM limit variations for just that eventuality. Could be the answer. It’d certainly be the simplest.
corrected!