WizzAir not accepting Monzo Cards

Use a digital wallet! They can jog on :joy:

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Seems fine to me, all settled too :man_shrugging:t5:

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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.

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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 :sparkles: ). 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.

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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 :upside_down_face:

I was on a BA flight a few months ago and was told they don’t accept the BA Amex :expressionless:

What Airline was this?

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Oh wow. Not sure why these companies make up these random rules.

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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.”

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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 :email:

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Wizzair UK

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Do these dingbats try to check what card you use via a digital wallet?

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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.

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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).

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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?

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I tried to pay with a Revolut Visa via Apple Pay and it was rejected! (Just like when Amex isn’t accepted). Didn’t bother with Rev MC just saved the hassle and used a CC.

They’re a pig ignorant business that tries to rip you off at every angle in the bookings process (e.g offering Pounds payments at THE SAME value as Euros) and strips away any iota of comfort from the plane. They consider cards like Revolut “prepaid” when they are not. Sadly they’re the only viable option for certain routes in Central/Eastern Europe.

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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…

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Nah they transitioned from prepaid MC/VISA to debit cards a few years ago. It’s not the same thing as FSCS vs E-money (aka how the funds are held). Prepaid debit cards have more limited functionality (can’t do things like placing offline charges, holds and the like) so it’s Wizz who just haven’t moved with the times.

Monese are still prepaid and for instance they don’t work for booking a restaurant with a card hold. If it’s prepaid it’ll generally say on the back.

Re Wizz yeah they just draw you in with a low price and then try every which way to make you book things you don’t need.

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