Why we sometimes freeze or block accounts

You’re assuming only Monzo do this?

So which bank are you going to use as your main account instead? Which bank is it that never freezes peoples accounts or stops payments?

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As has been said in many threads, it is how they deal with it afterwards, rather than the act of doing it - which of course is a requirement. In the article Monzo even say they were too slow.

That said, the article only has one side of the story. If everything in the article is true then there was no reason to close the account, so there is likely more to this particular story than meets the eye.

Indeed. And it’s worth noting that while Monzo accept they took too long to deal with the complaint, they still stand behind the ultimate decision.

Reading between some lines, this reads to me like de-risking. In that Monzo couldn’t prove the account had been misused, but there were enough red flags that they felt it too risky to keep the customer regardless.

As noted, the take-away sent ordered for an unusual address could trip fraud flags.

I also noted that the nominated account was the sister’s account, which strikes me as a little unusual.

And finally, there’s the mention of a payment being returned to the sender.

Putting all together and reading between the lines, my interpretation (and I stress, my interpretation - I could be totally off-base) is that it looked like the account was being used for money muling or laundering, and while nothing could be proven, the risk to Monzo was considered too high to keep them as a customer regardless.

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If that is the reason that is interesting, imagine going round your friends in the next town over and offering to pay for the takeway then getting your account frozen

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How come? I feel if I was going to have a nominated account and I wasn’t in a relationship at the time, I would likely pick a close family member

Hmm, I could be misunderstanding what a nominated account is in this situtation, then. Apologies if so. For context, I know someone personally who closed their Monzo account and the money was returned to their legacy bank account that they’d used to set up their Monzo account. So that’s how I understood the ‘nominated account’. If my understanding is wrong, I’ll go back and strike that part out of my post.

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I don’t understand this. The article says it was Just Eat - but I thought Just Eat had central payment processing (I might be mistaken though) - therefore Monzo would not know where the order was going to be delivered to let alone which town or city. Maybe someone who uses Just Eat can confirm?

What is a nominated account? Is it something you can ask to be added to your account? I have not heard the term before.

I’ve ordered Just Eat (and other delivery services) using my Monzo card in obscure places, including abroad, and have never had a problem. So it seems unlikely that that was the (only) thing that triggered the response.

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Well when you use the CASS for example your old current account is closed so it wouldn’t be possible in that situation

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Something is dodgy with the story. I have used Monzo for almost 2 years since prepaid card days till today as my main bank account. I have received multiple payments, receive my salary, used in overseas, transferred payment to Malaysia, India, Singapore and USA, used it for my vacation and had added/recommended 30 of my friends to use it. They are all Monzo users and none complained of any problem. I am not so sure what is the full story in this situation because only Monzo and the person whom was affected will know the full story.

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I was thinking online, that’s what just eat is, So it’s new addresses.

Merchants can do checks if the billing address is correct, they do this by sending the line 1 and the post code usually, and the bank tells them if that’s correct, that’s how monzo could know.

And some processors like stripe keep close watch on the shipping addresses and I.p. address where the card is used.

I thought it was just the postcode ?

It’s usually all the numbers in the address that are checked but not the letters

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I don’t know if they actually do as I’ve been using one site and putting in my billing address as my GF and my card is not registered there… thinking about it maybe I should point that out to them…:thinking:

It’s upto the merchant to allow the risks , for example Amazon don’t even ask for the security code.

So if you’re a long time customer your account could have a higher ‘trust’ level and allow when using the wrong address as the billing address, there’s loads of factors.

Stripe for example keeps track of all the addresses used for a card so if you used the card once with the correct billing and your gf shipping then it knows that her address is a known ‘linked’ address, and will tell this new site that it’s not suspicious.

If you’re interested some info here on different rules merchants can implement

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Huh that’s really interesting to know :+1:

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Yeah I have use both my uni and home address and have never had a transaction rejected

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@Peter_G could the above maybe be split into Why we sometimes freeze or block accounts ?

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Done! :+1:

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