Use Monzo to pay in shops, restaurants and online, anywhere in the world and in any currency, with no fees.
We pass Mastercard's exchange rate directly on to you, and don't add fees or additional charges.
There are no fees to withdrawals made from an ATM in the European Economic Area (EEA). For other countries, you can withdraw up to £200 in cash every 30 days for free. If you've used your free allowance, there's a 3% charge on withdrawals after that.
To find out how travelling abroad with Monzo works – from exchange rates to ATM fees – read our guide!
Earlier this year, we announced that we needed to introduce charges for withdrawing cash from ATMs abroad, to help cover the fees that we’d been paying so far. Together with our amazing community of users, we worked to come up with a solution that’s fair for everyone.
Based on your votes, we announced that we’d be introducing a 3% charge on cash withdrawals made from ATMs abroad, after free 30-day allowance of £200.
We previously announced that these charges would come into place on 18th December 2017, but we have some welcome news for those of you planning breaks abroad over Christmas: the fees will now only come into effect on Thursday 4th January 2018.
Remember:
Spending by card in a shop, hotel, restaurant, or at any other “point of sale” abroad will remain free of charge
Online transactions made in a foreign currency will also be free of charge
We’ll continue to pass on the Mastercard® exchange rate with no markup
ATM withdrawals in the UK will continue to be free of charge
It’s always busy here at Monzo HQ, and to put these fees in place in December as planned, we’d really have to rush. Not wanting to spoil the Christmas spirit, we’ve chosen to wait a few weeks instead, so everyone can enjoy their travels over the holidays fee-free.
How does it work?
You can take out £200 in cash for free while you're abroad, every 30 days. And after that we'll charge you 3%.
That means that if you withdraw £200 from an ATM in Amsterdam on the 1st of April, for example, we'll charge you 3% on any ATM withdrawals you make while you’re abroad in the next 30 days.
We’ll make sure you can always see how much of your free allowance is left, and show you clearly how much we've charged you each time you've taken out cash.
Sustainability, not profit
When you withdraw cash from an ATM outside the UK, Monzo pays the ATM owner a substantial fee. That fee ranges from around 1% in Europe, to just over 2% outside of Europe. We had been absorbing these ATM fees ourselves, but doing this wasn't sustainable for us as a business.
Our goal is to build a sustainable business, a bank that’s here to help customers for years and years to come.
We aren’t introducing charges to help us turn a profit. Instead, we wanted to work with our community to find a fair way to meet these mounting costs. It’s been a difficult decision, but one we’ve made in conjunction with our amazing community of users, and one that we’re committed to communicating clearly and transparently.
You can find out more about our reasons for doing this in our original blog post from September.
If anything’s unclear, please reach out to us on the community forum. We’ll share a post on the blog in January to announce that the fees have come into effect and answer any common questions.
If you don’t want to accept the change, please get in touch with us through in-app chat to close your account. We’d love you to stay, so if you have any questions, please let us know on the forum or tell us on Twitter.