When will Monzo support Apple Pay?

As I believe has been said, I almost always have my phone in my hand when I go to pay. Having to put it down, fish my wallet out of my jacket pocket, and then fish my debit card out of said wallet is a pain - being able to use the phone which is already in my hand is much easier.

Fishing the card out of my wallet used to be a really big issue - I had loads of cards in my wallet, and to take one out I generally had to take a whole wad out and flick through them to find the one I wanted. Having just cancelled 5 credit cards and binned a load of old loyalty cards, this is no longer a major issue, but is still a valid reason for wanting Apple Pay ASAP :slight_smile:

Liam

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I understood the appeal of Apple Pay the day I was all wrapped up in coat, gloves, scarf etc and was able to quickly pay for my train ticket with two taps on a watch button.

I mainly use it for payments where no human is present as people in shops tend to look at you as if you’re a bit daft when you wave your wrist at their terminal.

This is for all device payments. The system is actually run by Mastercard in the backend and for Android Pay, when you try to add your card you create what is called an MDES Token request - this is essentially something we have to approve (either manually or via the text message) which then allows your device to be linked to your actual card. A new PAN (16 digit card number) is created and used for that device, as @GalaxyMergirl says it is certainly not one time! The device PAN is then mapped at the Mastercard level to your actual card PAN, which is what we receive to authorise your transaction. Of course we can suspend/revoke your MDES token but it does theoretically allow for the device PAN to be remapped to a new physical card PAN, if your physical card needed to be replaced. :slight_smile:

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Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply it wasn’t for other products based on the same framework, sorry!

I was unclear saying it’s created by the issuer. That’s true in cases where the issuer and network are the same (American Express and Discover), obviously it is murkier for the four-party schemes :slight_smile:

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Completely spot on! Your card details are not shared with the vendor. No chance of fraud/Card details falling into the hands of crooks via a data leak :slight_smile: beautiful!

Always is a very strong term.

  • There can be compatibility issues, these used to be especially common with American Express cards on Ingenico iPP 350s with an old kernel version. But they can also be caused by different configurations for the virtual card.
  • Mobile payments are online-only so won’t work in an offline environment.
  • Not all contactless terminals are configured to support CDCVM so payments may fail or require an alternative CVM (signature or online PIN) over a country’s contactless CVM exemption (ÂŁ30 in the UK). Of course, this is no worse than a physical contactless card which doesn’t (yet… it’s possibly coming) have CDCVM anyway.
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How could a physical card have CDCVM? That doesn’t make sense…

Liam

Onboard fingerprint reader :slight_smile:

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:open_mouth:

That’d be a very small fingerprint reader. Would love to have one of them though :wink:

I don’t think it’ll catch on. Gemalto is showing it off, and it’s technically possible, but the cost is probably just too high. I could see it issued on a few cards aimed at the ultra rich (the upper parts of Mastercard World Elite and Visa Infinity-level - MAYBE some Visa Signature [which is the true equivalent to Mastercard World Elite, Mastercard has nothing like Visa Infinity]) but that’d be it.

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Bank of Cyprus are apparently issuing them:

Oh yeah! I forgot seeing that!

Notice, though, it doesn’t say who gets them. I doubt they’ll be on a basic card (if they are… wow, they might be far cheaper than I expected). I’m imagining Visa Infinite.

P.S. I should clarify, the other possibility I could imagine is banks charging for them.

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Mmm beg to differ on some of these points, especially in relation to offline payments. Apple Pay works on TFL for example. Perhaps you could give me an example of what you mean by offline.

When I refer to contactless terminals, I’m referring to the UK. This is where I live and use my card on a day to day basis. I have yet to come across a terminal in the UK than can handle contactless and not Apple Pay. It would be somewhat crazy to refer to every contactless terminal in the world.

Not sure why AMEX is relevant or what the complicated language referred to. Are you saying AMEX doesn’t work with Apple Pay?

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TfL uses online authorisation (but they do use offline data authentication). By offline, I mean a situation where the terminal is asking the card for authorisation and the issuer is not contacted (offline authorisation). Mobile payments do not support this (neither did the original Monzo prepaid card, but the current account card does as a last-case option). It’s very rare for a terminal to be offline-only in the UK (or anywhere, really) - last time I saw it was at Happy Lemon when their processor was down.

Terminals run EMV kernels, these are the bits of software that interact with a card. Ingenico’s iPP 350 is one of the most common card terminals in the UK. An old kernel version (still used by McDonald’s and Tesco until this year) didn’t work with American Express in mobile wallets. At least, I’m pretty sure it was the kernel - for any other element of the software to cause this error would be incredibly unlikely, in any case, they all needed software updates that took several years to roll out, causing massive compatibility issues for all the mobile payments services.

I have no inside knowledge and don’t know exactly what was wrong, but my suspicion was that the terminal was misinterpreting the force-online nature to mean force-insert. For example, at McDonald’s the force insert (which some banks do occasionally) message was ‘BANK SECURITY CHECK’ and that is the error that occurred at McDonald’s.

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Today I left home for a big day in central London. At the train station’s ticket machine I realised I forgot Monzo in my other coat’s pocket, main reason being I was using it in the tube yesterday. Before Monzo I always used Apple Pay in the underground as I don’t like the idea of a loose card in my pockets – easy to loose or forget.

Anyway, no harm done as I have other means of payment on me but whichever I use it will still mess up my Monzo budgeting.

If Monzo supported Apple Pay I most likely wouldn’t have forgotten the card in the first place, but even if I did I could still pay with Monzo with my phone.

Can’t wait :pray:

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For me, it’s about having options. Whilst I often have my cards with me, occasionally I don’t so being able to pay using my phone or watch is great. Plus I use a number of apps which use Apple Pay which greatly speeds up the payment process.

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Once Monzo supports Apple Pay, I don’t need to carry both my phone and my card around with me—I can just carry my phone. This is especially useful if I’m going on a long run and I’d like to buy some food during or after my run. I don’t even need my phone for that because Apple Pay works on the Apple Watch without an iPhone present.

Having to carry a card around brings with it its own problems: 1) It’s easy to lose. 2) It’s easy to forget to have it on your person when you nip out of the office to get some food. It often leads to us deciding to use a physical wallet to protect against #1, making #2 even more likely because some of us don’t like having pointless bulky things in our pockets when we’re sitting down. I don’t need a physical wallet for absolutely anything else, so having to have one just for my Monzo card is annoying.

When Monzo supports Apple Pay, I won’t need to carry my physical card around with me, probably ever if I ensure I have a small amount of backup cash in my bag.

Contactless doesn’t work with the Monzo card for transactions over £30 (standard for physical cards), but Apple Pay can be used for transactions over £30.

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And the main point that doesn’t really affect us but is frustrating: Monzo should really be seen as the best FinTech bank—the best bank for those who prefer the best digital offerings a bank can provide. Without support for Apple Pay, Monzo cannot be that because many people looking for that won’t want to have to carry around a physical card.

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It’s very sad to realise that in about a week’s time, it’ll be three whole months since Monzo supported Android Pay and we still have no idea when Apple Pay support will come :disappointed:

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Actually, there are reports on here of Monzo approving online PIN or signature transactions over the CVM waiver limit. I have Android Pay so I haven’t tested myself.

P.S. I will admit that until more terminals in the UK support online PIN, this isn’t terribly useful. Contactless plus signature would be far more hassle than contact plus PIN!

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