Credit card version of Monzo?

davej311

I'm working in Ireland at the moment, I was put on to the Monzo debit card which is great in that whenever you use it abroad you get instant notification from the app of how much the transaction in euros has cost in £, whereas with my credit cards it takes a few days to come through. Makes it a pain when doing my expenses! The problem is I have to put money in the account first & I'm not looking to change my bank account yet. Is there a credit card that does this?

[Deleted User]

Depends if the instant notification is what you need, or just instant visibility?

Tandem Credit Card is a relatively new expansion of Tandem (which was similar to Monzo et al. for the debit card). I assume that gives notifications.

Halifax Clarity is always up there as an overall winner for travel, but not sure if they give you instant visibility of pending transactions? Years since I had one.

Although it's a credit building brand, the Aqua Reward card is Aqua's 'top' card. I have it and transactions appear instantly on the app as 'pending'. The exchange rate is locked in so it'll be that pending rate, and there are no charges (but interest rate is likely to be high, so cash will cost you a bit more than using a debit card or say Halifax/Barclays)

You can't get a proper 'receipt' (printscreen of more details) until it goes to posted. So no transaction ID, just the name. But whether you need it depends what your employer accepts for expenses. If you have the physical receipt showing say 40 euros (and submit that for expenses), then they may just accept your word that it actually cost you £xx ?? And you'd see that £xx amount instantly from Aqua.

So no notification, but fee free conversion and you can see if you load up and login to the app (annoyingly, they don't have fingerprint login yet).

One card that will give instant notification like Monzo is Curve (technically a debit/pre-paid card) - it links to your existing credit/debit cards and does the 'load' in real time. However there's a 1% foreign conversion charge (included in the cost displayed). So I don't use it for cross-currency payments. BUT if the employer wouldn't grumble about the charge, it may well be a winner to give you instant notifications with no topup.

eDicky

davej311 wrote: »

I'm not looking to change my bank account yet.

There's no need to change, why not have Monzo as an additional account? Otherwise, as above, and Halifax Clarity does show pending transactions immediately in the app. But note that with any card the final converted amount in GBP is not known until the date of settlement, a day or two after the transaction, when the rate is likely to vary from the provisional figure given when pending.

[Deleted User]

eDicky wrote: »

But note that with any card the final converted amount in GBP is not known until the date of settlement, a day or two after the transaction, when the rate is likely to vary from the provisional figure given when pending.

Ah very interesting, I've never noticed that with Aqua charging different final amounts to the pending - although likely to be small differences, may have overlooked it. I guess if I knew it said £36.82 at pending stage and they finally charged £36.88 unless somebody was really keeping track it would be easily missed.

In that case I suppose Curve would be best if the OP is wanting to submit near-realtime expense claims as it allows for certainty and instant visibility of the final amount (with Curve accepting any currency volatility in exchange for the 1 surcharge)