Mondo/Monzo Card
Discussion
Anybody got one of these or on the waiting list?
I see they raised £1m in 96 seconds, not too shabby!
I struggle to ultimately see the point in the card, but would like mainstream banks to pay attention to what is possible nowadays.
Worth signing up for sh!ts'n'gigs?
Monzo
Edited to correct the link
I see they raised £1m in 96 seconds, not too shabby!
I struggle to ultimately see the point in the card, but would like mainstream banks to pay attention to what is possible nowadays.
Worth signing up for sh!ts'n'gigs?
Monzo
Edited to correct the link
Edited by joshleb on Saturday 27th August 11:47
I have one. Its main advantage is its non-loaded charges for overseas transactions. You get the mastercard rate on all withdrawals and purchases.
The app is nice as well as it alerts you whenever a transaction is logged, you can scan in receipts for each purchase and things like that.
The app is nice as well as it alerts you whenever a transaction is logged, you can scan in receipts for each purchase and things like that.
walm said:
They seem to apply a markup on the FX rate:"At the weekend (Friday 00:00 - Sunday 23:59) we apply a small mark up on the spot rate as the Forex markets are closed. We take the rate from Friday 00:00 and apply a 0.5% mark up on major currencies and 1.0% on other currencies to protect the company from potential losses due to a large fluctuation in the rate. For illiquid currencies like Russian Ruble and Thai Baht, there is 1.5% mark up on weekend."
Source: https://revolut.com/faq/gettingstarted.php?cat_id=...
KTF said:
walm said:
They seem to apply a markup on the FX rate:"At the weekend (Friday 00:00 - Sunday 23:59) we apply a small mark up on the spot rate as the Forex markets are closed. We take the rate from Friday 00:00 and apply a 0.5% mark up on major currencies and 1.0% on other currencies to protect the company from potential losses due to a large fluctuation in the rate. For illiquid currencies like Russian Ruble and Thai Baht, there is 1.5% mark up on weekend."
Source: https://revolut.com/faq/gettingstarted.php?cat_id=...
Never exchanged over the weekend.
Just loaded it with GBP and immediately exchanged to USD at spot but it must have been during the week since no mark up.
Card came in 3 days though which was an advantage over the Mondo vapour-ware.
Quite clever. They know most users shop overseas at weekends and so advertise zero additional spread but in reality whack on a massive 0.5% to 1.5% to the bulk of their flow. And do MasterCard stop quoting a spread over the weekend? Do they b
ks. They are 24/7/365.
Where there is physical fx there is a scam. It will not change. And the surest way to spot a wheeze is when an entity advertises 'no fees'.
ks. They are 24/7/365. Where there is physical fx there is a scam. It will not change. And the surest way to spot a wheeze is when an entity advertises 'no fees'.
I'm surprised the banks haven't jumped on this sort of thing before, there's so much potential added value that would let them charge for accounts, particularly for business customers.
I manage finances with a spreadsheet, it's fully automated, but the basic principle is download bank statements and then apply a category to each transaction. There's a macro that applies the category automatically based on the transaction details that are on the statement and a list I've created.
The budget is based on the previous year's transactions, with adjustments added in at the start of the year.
It's a bit faffy going through all the unmatched transactions every month, but tells you everything you could possibly want to know about your finances once you've done the matching.
Anyway, the banks could do this for me and all their customers easily and automatically, and provide the app access. They could let you build your own level of detail and then automatically tag most of your transactions based on their better knowledge of what a transaction is, either because they know where it originated and have tagged the entities or because their customers have tagged it already.
The main area I have problems with is buying from supermarkets, that isn't food or Amazon and eBay purchases as I have to go through each and allocate them appropriately, the next step would be to be able to link these accounts in so the service matches these up, breaks the transactions down and allocates to multiple categories. I don't bother with the supermarkets, but it does skew food shopping a bit.
Actually, if it was possible to get some sort of API access to bank statements anyone could do this, maybe someone already has, I should have a look.....
I manage finances with a spreadsheet, it's fully automated, but the basic principle is download bank statements and then apply a category to each transaction. There's a macro that applies the category automatically based on the transaction details that are on the statement and a list I've created.
The budget is based on the previous year's transactions, with adjustments added in at the start of the year.
It's a bit faffy going through all the unmatched transactions every month, but tells you everything you could possibly want to know about your finances once you've done the matching.
Anyway, the banks could do this for me and all their customers easily and automatically, and provide the app access. They could let you build your own level of detail and then automatically tag most of your transactions based on their better knowledge of what a transaction is, either because they know where it originated and have tagged the entities or because their customers have tagged it already.
The main area I have problems with is buying from supermarkets, that isn't food or Amazon and eBay purchases as I have to go through each and allocate them appropriately, the next step would be to be able to link these accounts in so the service matches these up, breaks the transactions down and allocates to multiple categories. I don't bother with the supermarkets, but it does skew food shopping a bit.
Actually, if it was possible to get some sort of API access to bank statements anyone could do this, maybe someone already has, I should have a look.....
A quick google came up with this which is interesting; http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/10/consumer_t...
DonkeyApple said:
Quite clever. They know most users shop overseas at weekends and so advertise zero additional spread but in reality whack on a massive 0.5% to 1.5% to the bulk of their flow. And do MasterCard stop quoting a spread over the weekend? Do they bks. They are 24/7/365.
Where there is physical fx there is a scam. It will not change. And the surest way to spot a wheeze is when an entity advertises 'no fees'.
I respect you DA so don't take this as chippy, and I have no investment in Revolut (although I tried!!).ks. They are 24/7/365. Where there is physical fx there is a scam. It will not change. And the surest way to spot a wheeze is when an entity advertises 'no fees'.
But I think you misunderstand how the card works.
You load up some GBP.
Then you, at your leisure, exchange it into other currencies.
Once you have a balance in that currency, you can spend in that currency.
The spending is totally independent to the exchanging.
So I would load up £1,000 GBP and instantly change it to USD and then spend until the balance ran low - repeat.
Oh and a 0.5% spread is tiny at retail isn't it?
walm said:
DonkeyApple said:
Quite clever. They know most users shop overseas at weekends and so advertise zero additional spread but in reality whack on a massive 0.5% to 1.5% to the bulk of their flow. And do MasterCard stop quoting a spread over the weekend? Do they bks. They are 24/7/365.
Where there is physical fx there is a scam. It will not change. And the surest way to spot a wheeze is when an entity advertises 'no fees'.
I respect you DA so don't take this as chippy, and I have no investment in Revolut (although I tried!!).ks. They are 24/7/365. Where there is physical fx there is a scam. It will not change. And the surest way to spot a wheeze is when an entity advertises 'no fees'.
But I think you misunderstand how the card works.
You load up some GBP.
Then you, at your leisure, exchange it into other currencies.
Once you have a balance in that currency, you can spend in that currency.
The spending is totally independent to the exchanging.
So I would load up £1,000 GBP and instantly change it to USD and then spend until the balance ran low - repeat.
Oh and a 0.5% spread is tiny at retail isn't it?
Re the rates, mastercard's spread is around 1%, which is still chunky. If you were buying physical currency day in, day out for retail customers you'd be paying a fifth of that, so you could pocket an enormous difference through quoting retail and dealing at institutional. Plus, adding an additional .5% onto Matercard's own rate makes for a huge turn.
I suspect that if the t's and c's of the card were looked at we would see the normal wheeze of the fx operation not being under the card's license but unlicensed and run through a separate legal entity?
I think the key lies in trying to understand why, if they are using MasterCard to route flow, do they need to widen the spread at the weekend.
Where there is physical FX there is a crime.
AyBee said:
I'm off to Rhodes in September and wondering if I am better off using the card abroad or getting cash swapped here before I go and taking that with me? The card would be the preferred option obviously.
I would look at the Halifax Clarity card or the Monzo card. Both do not load for transactions in Europe. The Clarity card does apply interest on cash withdrawals but you can avoid this by pre-loading the card before you go and/or paying the balance as soon as it shows on online banking.walm said:
DonkeyApple said:
I think the key lies in trying to understand why, if they are using MasterCard to route flow, do they need to widen the spread at the weekend.
Yeah - I have to say it looks like the weekend is a rip-off.But overall it's 5/7ths less of a rip-off than other cards!
KTF said:
AyBee said:
I'm off to Rhodes in September and wondering if I am better off using the card abroad or getting cash swapped here before I go and taking that with me? The card would be the preferred option obviously.
I would look at the Halifax Clarity card or the Monzo card. Both do not load for transactions in Europe. The Clarity card does apply interest on cash withdrawals but you can avoid this by pre-loading the card before you go and/or paying the balance as soon as it shows on online banking.Monzo use the mastercard rate - https://www.mastercard.com/global/currencyconversi... This will beat any FX place like Travelex, etc.
See here:
https://community.monzo.com/t/transactions-abroad-...
And here:
https://monzo.com/blog/2016/07/06/how-to-travel-wi...
See here:
https://community.monzo.com/t/transactions-abroad-...
And here:
https://monzo.com/blog/2016/07/06/how-to-travel-wi...
DonkeyApple said:
walm said:
DonkeyApple said:
I think the key lies in trying to understand why, if they are using MasterCard to route flow, do they need to widen the spread at the weekend.
Yeah - I have to say it looks like the weekend is a rip-off.But overall it's 5/7ths less of a rip-off than other cards!
To try and avoid that reaming then it would be smart to establish the time of day they make their block transaction and execute yours as close before it as possible to minimise the risk and reaming on that one.
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