Did anyone ever get a reason why they won’t accept Monzo Cards?
Seems like a merchant issue rather than a bank issue Monzo can’t force someone to make them accept a payment method.
EDIT: And the reply above me seems to show this must be a knowledge gap rather than WizzAir just not accepting Monzo maybe the attendants aren’t properly trained or are misunderstanding what a Monzo Card is for a different type of payment method?
I thought the point was if Mastercard is accepted, there shouldn’t be any discrimination in issuers?
This is my suspicion, dating from when Monzo was a pre-paid, and anecdotally individual retailers began to associate the Hot Coral cards with fraudulent customers. Rather than a technical block, I reckon some staff just remember being told not to accept Hot Coral–coloured cards “back in the day”. If the customer uses Plus or Premium, or doesn’t show the card to the staff member, I suspect the transaction would go through just fine.
I’m unsure about how much of this is public knowledge vs internal so I will stay vague but try to answer as best as I can.
Monzo is really good at Chargebacks, if a customer says a payment wasn’t them we will take a payment to Mastercard to try get your money back. Merchants really don’t like this as they are fined every time we do this (unless they win the dispute then the fee is passed to us).
We submitted a lot of Chargebacks that airlines couldn’t dispute but they thought they were entitled to the money so they banned Monzo cards on their planes, (sadly as mentioned above you can’t ban a card provider through Mastercard so if you insist they try your card it’ll work like magic 
). As far as I am aware, we have spoken to these airlines and this problem should be resolved and your Monzo card should be accepted as normal anywhere.
If they are still declining Monzo cards please reach out in app so we cann reach out to the merchant through MasterCard to fix this.
Had a flight yesterday…
There was recorded announcement - “We are not accepting pre-paid cards such as Monzo and Revolut”
Then they are just plain wrong 
I was on a BA flight a few months ago and was told they don’t accept the BA Amex 
What Airline was this?
Oh wow. Not sure why these companies make up these random rules.
5 monkeys were placed in a cage as part of an experiment. In the middle of the cage was a ladder with bananas on the top rung. Every time a monkey tried to climb the ladder, the experimenter sprayed all of the monkeys with icy water. Eventually, each time a monkey started to climb the ladder, the other ones pulled him off and beat him up so they could avoid the icy spray. Soon, no monkey dared go up the ladder.
The experimenter then substituted one of the monkeys in the cage with a new monkey. The first thing the new monkey did was try to climb the ladder to reach the bananas. After several beatings, the new monkey learned the social norm. He never knew “why” the other monkeys wouldn’t let him go for the bananas because he had never been sprayed with ice water, but he quickly learned that this behaviour would not be tolerated by the other monkeys.
One by one, each of the monkeys in the cage was substituted for a new monkey until none of the original group remained. Every time a new monkey went up the ladder, the rest of the group pulled him off, even those who had never been sprayed with the icy water.
By the end of the experiment, the 5 monkeys in the cage had learned to follow the rule (don’t go for the bananas), without any of them knowing the reason why (we’ll all get sprayed by icy water). If we could have asked the monkeys for their rationale behind not letting their cage mates climb the ladder, their answer would probably be: “I don’t know, that’s just how its always been done.”
To be clear; they do.
But one flight had an issue once where Amex needed to put a PIN in not contactless and that filtered down enough to one particular flight crew who told one particular flight that it wasn’t accepted.
I literally had to tell them “it works, I use it all the time” to let them try it, and they were surprised it did.
Edit: actually kinda like the above post 
Wizzair UK
Just got off a wizz air flight, they announced that pre pay cards weren’t accepted and specifically said revolut and monzo as examples. Tried to pay with my monzo card Contactless and it was declined, didn’t try chip and pin, just used another card instead.
Their machines can’t “not accept” Monzo so there must have been something else (possibly you need to use chip and PIN for that transaction).
Wizz Air still refuse to take Monzo on their flights. They will accept ALL other mastercard payments including Chase and Revolut.
Did you show your card, and they said so? Or did you tap and it didn’t work?
But they literally are? That’s what Revolut are.
Though I agree that WizzAir are quickly becoming the new Ryanair after having started off as a decent low-cost airline. Recently found out that the £20 tickets I wanted to book would be £200-odd if I wanted to pick my seat and bring more than a backpack on board…
It was in my hand ready to tap, and they saw its distinctive colour and said “if that’s a Monzo card we don’t accept it. You will have to use an alternative card.”
Next time, don’t show them. Just tap, I bet it’ll go through fine.
There’s no way you’re getting me on a Wizz Air flight…
… but I bet that Plus/Premium customers just tap and it’s fine.
I’ve had this with Jet2. I just said “well let’s see” and used it fine.
This seems to be the most relevant thread for this.
Ryanair yesterday (May 23) on board were asking if cards were VISA or Mastercard. For those that were the latter e.g Revolut, Santander it was chip and pin only or Apple Pay.
For anything else contactless. No bank discrimination just card type.