I think this is a better alternative than charging everyone for the Monzo card- if I’ll be travelling for 2-3 weeks, paying, say £5 to withdraw cash for 30 days overseas (should have a different amount in/outside EU) is still a lot cheaper for me than taking the exchange rate at the ATM/ going to a money changer. e.g. I paid £10 more to get the ATM rate (by accident) for €100 than Monzo’s rate when I was in France. It was also suggested that there could be a limit of free withdrawals, maybe 1 free withdrawal a month overseas or something like that and you pay a one-off fee for subsequent ones. Bit like how I get one free overseas transfer with Santander.
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That’s the big question 
personally, I’d like to see no fees up to a certain point which most users, who might just take a couple of holidays abroad each year, will not reach. Then a fee to cover the cost of any additional withdrawals, once that threshold’s been crossed. Simple 
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Sounds like a reasonable fair use policy to me.
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Its a valid point but you’ll lose many SE Asia holiday makers where cash is king and credit card is rare. So many including me have no option but to make atm withdrawals.
You may be shooting yourself in the foot. Many card company’s such as Barclays and Halifax offer fee free credit cards when travelling abroad up to an atm limit of £1500. And if repaid in full costs diddly squat. This is more than Monzo offer now. So by moving the goalposts it only makes your card less alluring compared to others.
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That’s true too. They’re not quite free though because you will pay interest on the balance of course.
As with all credit cards a lot of users won’t do that but yes, some will & I guess in that case, Monzo would have to compete with the credit cards based on the additional features in the app.
I’m hopeful that because Monzo are only aiming to cover the cost of any costs that they incur, the fees would still be low though.
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That’s true too. They’re not quite free though because you will pay interest on the balance of course.
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Not so. You don’t get charged interest on spending or cash withdrawals abroad, provided you pay them off in full by the date shown on your statement.
Out of curiosity, what are the FX rates from these cards? How do they compare to Monzo’s FX rates?
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I only have one reply left as I’m a new user but the FX rates are the same as Monzo rates. Monzo use Mastercard rates I believe. Barclays and Halifax would be the same.
I don’t think that’s true – have you tried it? Every credit card I’ve ever seen charges (a high) interest on cash withdrawal amounts immediately. You don’t get the same 30-day interest-free period that you do on purchases. So if you withdraw cash on a credit card (in or out of the UK), you will accrue interest from the moment of withdrawal, until you pay the bill. You might want to read your credit card T&Cs very closely before you use it to withdraw cash in Thailand.
For instance, the Halifax Clarity card T&Cs states:
A4. How interest is worked out
We calculate interest daily based on the total amount you owe. We add together all the daily interest amounts in each statement period and add the total to your balance on your statement date.
There are three exceptions to this rule:
Annual fees: We do not charge interest on annual fees (Section A5 says if your card has an annual fee).
Purchases: We do not charge interest on purchases made during your latest statement period if you pay off your full balance (including any balance transfers and money transfers) by the payment due date and you also paid your previous month’s balance in full by the due date.
Default charges: We do not charge interest on default charges for the first 28 days after the day we give you notice (usually in your statement) that these charges are payable. After that we charge simple interest, so we will not charge interest on interest.
Note the “We calculate interest daily based on the total amount you owe” line, and that cash withdrawals are not listed as an exception to this.
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Barclays credit cards are not MasterCard
We know that the Halifax Clarity Card uses the MasterCard rate but it’s not safe to assume that other products / providers will too. Judging by the way that they’ve behaved in the past & how they handle debit card useage, they might try to make some money by giving users a worse rate too.
To avoid any confusion, if you know of other products that offer the MasterCard rate or equivalent, could you please share links to the webpage that details their rates?
Re-reading this and the travel thread, it occurs to me that the high foreign charges are indicative of the ‘old-skool, fleece your customers for a profit’ mentality of banking that 
Monzo was set up to smash. If Monzo get their offering right, it’d be a huge step towards their goal of becoming the Facebook of money, 1bn users they’ve been taking aim at, which in turn would give them the power to rewrite the rule book re profiteering charges.
I’m backing @anon91821566 all the way.
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I have used the Halifax Clarity card for years, and indeed, they do use the same rate as Monzo.
For foreign cash withdrawals they do charge you the standard interest from the working day after you made the withdrawal, until you have paid it off. So, if you pay off the withdrawn cash immediately it’s free. If you withdraw £100 and wait a full month to pay it off, it would be about £1.50 or so.
Have a look here: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/travel-credit-cards#bestbuys
Interesting to know you essentially have up to 24 hours to pay it off, I didn’t realise that. As you say, if you do a bill payment for the withdrawn amount immediately (or in advance?), you could avoid any interest. Quite a faff, and potential for missing the window, but a useful emergency backup.
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Well, if you really wanted to be 100 % fee free it’s not that easy: you won’t know the precise GBP amount until the payment settles, which can be a few days. You also mustn’t have a positive balance on the account as per their T&C, so you’d need to eyeball it, and pay a bit more than you’d expect, but not too much so you don’t go above 0. But frankly, even if you only pay off after it settles: let’s assume you withdraw. £100 and pay it off 1 week later. That’s about 30p in interest. Considering that I just paid at least 100 to 1000 times as much for the plane ticket to get to wherever I’m on holiday I really don’t care…
What I would say is that free withdrawals without having to do this balancing act was the only reason I got a Monzo card. I travel mostly to countries where card payments are not widely done, so it’s nice. However, if Monzo were to introduce fees then I’d need to see: if there are other providers offering free withdrawal (Starling?) I’ll switch to them. Otherwise I’ll just use the cheapest one available. (shrug)
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I travel to Asia lots. Good news it’s getting more card friendly. Lots of mastercard accepted adverts in Bangkok and Chiang Mai.
However you do need to withdraw cash, your already charged 250thb by the local bank and if I was charged by Monzo I would probably ditch Monzo.
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The main account vs travelcard is important to me too. I put 95% plus of card transactions through Monzo (all UK so far) and keep a balance. This is very different from getting card topping up by £50/£100 and withdrawing abroad straight away, come home out card in draw till next holiday
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Thanks nanos for clarifying the reality of trying to avoid fees, and the scale of them in any case.
Fair enough, if that’s your only interest in Monzo (a free travel card), that’s a reasonable decision.
But this isn’t the service Monzo is trying to provide. They’re trying to provide a modern bank and financial control centre which doesn’t surprise people with charges. So I can’t see them trying to tailor the product to the kind of use you’re looking for. It’s expensive and can only be supported by punitive charges elsewhere (either for you or other customers).
I guess the summary is: enjoy it while it lasts and re-evaluate when the current account launches, but don’t get your hopes up that there will be large overseas free cash withdrawals. That’s just not Monzo’s focus or intended main use case.
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That is all very true!
I guess I have grown to like Monzo, but there are two thing that prevent me personally from using it “for everything” right now : the disability to export transactions to my accounting software (I suggested this in another thread) and the lack of a Web client. If these two were added then I could see myself switching to monzo for everything, but now we are getting seriously off topic… My apologies…
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Maybe not for UK personal customers but business customers in UK have had Visa cards replaced by Mastercard cards How to Use Your New Barclaycard Business MasterCard
Also in other countries such as the US they offer personal customers Mastercard instead of Visa Browse Credit Cards | Barclays US
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