Will Monzo keep a pre-paid card facility?

Hey @saveen HSBC froze all transactions in-and-out to my current account.

I’m guessing that they do some kind of risk assessment when an account has been compromised. I often hold substantial sums in my current account and perhaps they make a decision on what level of liability they’re willing to assume, ie. £1000 is OK, but £100,000 isn’t, who knows?

In my case they insisted on giving me a whole new account, new debit and credit cards. However, they insisted that before that could happen, I had to come into a UK branch with photo ID, not exactly helpful when I was in Japan!

Hi @HoddzDJ In that case, I’d have exactly what I have now, there would be no advantage to moving to Monzo!

I just… erm… yeah okay.

̄ _(ツ)_/ ̄

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Obviously we can’t say for sure but I’m willing to bet that Monzo would handle an account being compromised in a way that would enable you to verify your identity while still in Japan.

As an example Jonas has talked about taking a 2 second selfie when you sign up for your account. You can then submit another to prove your identity in this type of scenario (possibly alongside other methods of verification).

Apart from anything, Monzo won’t have branches so the proof will have to be submitted digitally / by post (& - as Tom mentioned recently while on the panel at LendIt USA) they hate sending documents by mail just as much as we do).

It would still leave me potentially nursing a large loss until Monzo accepts liability and refunds, as well as a useless card albeit Monzo could follow Amex’s example and courier a new one the next day to anywhere in the world.

The simplest solution would be if Monzo continued to have a pre-paid card, as I originally suggested. The alternative would be to have two entirely separate Monzo accounts with two separate cards, so I can transfer smaller sums such as £500 a day from the main deposit account to an account that is used for day-to-day transactions.

Another option is if Monzo eventually offers a credit card that you could clear down the balance on a daily basis from within the app.

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Tom is quite averse to credit cards as mentioned here

https://community.monzo.com/t/what-about-credit-cards/5373/4?u=beningreenjam

It has been discussed that Monzo may work to add CCA Protection, or equivalent, without actually offering a credit card, although I can’t find that though :confused:

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Yes credit cards won’t be a Monzo product in the foreseeable future. Reason is, Monzo wants to keep it’s balance sheet small & the founders have talked on numerous occasions - here, for example - about Monzo’s plan being to refer users to 3rd party providers, for these types of products, rather than offering them themselves.

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Thanks Ben @beningreenjam and Alex @alexs OK, that option is off the table, but who knows, perhaps Monzo will come up with an elegant solution for travellers over time. :slight_smile:

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how about the ability to block some of your balance keep 10K in your account but allow the user to set a daily budget thats available i.e. your £500 verified by your pin or something ?

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That’s a great idea too. However, it still means that the loss or cancellation of your card in effect leaves you stranded without access to cash. I guess that could be got around by issuing two cards on the same account. :slight_smile:

Ah! I think I understand your suggestion now (sorry, slow morning for me).

You’re suggesting a backup card, one that would remain frozen by default and kept in a draw somewhere perhaps, until the other is frozen? That’s how I interpret your query as I wouldn’t recommend having two cards active on the same account at the same time.

The downside of that though, is each card currently costs around £40 to produce. If Monzo were to offer spare cards to everybody, they’d be making even bigger losses than they already are (currently only supported by lovely investors :blush:). If this were to be an option, I’d expect it to be an optional purchase.

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thats almost like losing your wallet with both your cards in scenario , or losing the two things that you keep your cards separately in - it happens in life - all joking aside, you are trying to protect yourself from a situation that you found yourself in in the past - I can appreciate that, but to think of all eventualities you would be having replacement cards delivered to your next holiday address to cover yourself from what if scenarios - you must do whatever makes you feel comfortable

Hey Ian @anon95680666

Just to recap. Like a great many people, I travel on business, a lot. I budget £1,000 a day, and transfer that to my current account before leaving, so if I’m going to be gone for four weeks, I’ll move £30,000 into my current account.

If my card gets stolen or cloned, there’s potentially £30,000 to spend on it, which Monzo would be on the hook for refunding to me. The moment I realise my card is missing and report it lost, I’m then stuck without access to my major funds, until I can get a replacement card.

I prefer to never use the debit card that is associated with my main current account that has substantial funds in it, except inside the premises of a major bank. I transfer £500-£1,000 a day to my Cashplus card and use that everywhere. If anything happens, I still have access to my funds, and the most anyone can steal is whatever I loaded on to the Cashplus card that day.

In certain parts of the world, crime is endemic, the cloning of cards in Eastern Europe and Asia, theft at gunpoint, which has happened to me twice, both in broad daylight in the business district areas, once in Rio and once in Manila. I lost both my wallet and phone on both those occasions.

I’m also aware that travellers may not be Monzo’s target audience, which of course is fine too!! However, to say that “you are trying to protect yourself from a situation that you found yourself in in the past” is to ignore the reality that a surprising percentage of even tourist travellers lose their wallets and their phones whilst abroad.

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Hey Ben @beningreenjam I’d be more than happy to pay for additional cards, I do that now for various bank and prepaid cards. The ability to block one card and then unblock another would definitely be another solution too. :slight_smile:

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Ben @beningreenjam I think a combination of your concept of being able to block-unblock two separate cards and Ian’s @anon95680666 of being able to specify a daily spend cap on each card appears to be the ideal solution!! :slight_smile:

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Happy to help :smile:

The problem is I can see some potential challenges with registering a second card to an account. To non-technical users it might seem simple but I’d expect there to be quite a lot of back-end changes as well as a few to the design of the app.

With the advantage that this reduces the likelihood of downtime for users who are more at risk of losing their cards like yourself let’s hope Monzo see’s the benefit too.

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You may well be right, but then aren’t Monzo going to have joint accounts where partners share one account and have separate cards?

Not quite, I won’t go into detail here as it’s getting off-topic but that idea has been discussed a huge amount, one of the places is here:

https://community.monzo.com/t/bill-splitting/3869/2?u=beningreenjam

It’s in development and should be up available in the next major release, although we don’t get told when that’ll be.

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That’s not on the roadmap actually.

Having said that, Tom has talked about enabling users to create virtual cards (one card per subscription in this instance)

So it is possible - though as Ben says, if Monzo didn’t allow for this while doing their initial setup - this could require a significant change to their backend systems.

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Thanks Ben @beningreenjam and Alex @alexs I wasn’t aware that Monzo wouldn’t be catering for joint accounts as a bank. It’s good to know, as I wouldn’t want to advise people who need such a facility to sign up. :slight_smile:

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