https://www.fca.org.uk/consumers/unauthorised-payments-accou...

"In most cases the bank must refund the payment without undue delay and by the end of the business day following the day on which it became aware of the problem, unless it has reasonable grounds for suspecting that you have acted fraudulently."

"When your bank refunds an unauthorised payment it must also refund any charges and interest you have paid because of the unauthorised transaction."

U.S. banks, as well. Twice Citi has refunded me within minutes. Chase within hours. It seems the policy is "give the customer the money, and we'll sort it out later."

The point is to not have to need to dispute a charge.

Some providers are interestingly stubborn when it comes to charge backs and can hold on to the (fraudulent) vendors side even if you're clearly right.

Monzo in the UK is a prime example for that. An internet vendor charged me more than he should and refused to void the transaction (basically text-book fraud) and I filled for a charge back with monzo. I was extremely confident that it wouldn't take much however monzo customer service resisted to help.

The monetary value wasn't much however in the end I perfectly understood that this "protection" does not exist on the credit card issuer/bank side of things.

Be careful.

Generally guidance is that you are entitled to a refund from the bank only if you did not authorise a particular transaction.

It's just that credit cards must offer chargebacks by law.

The Moral of the Story: Money institutes may not cover you like you think they will.

I've learned my lesson.

Again, be -very- careful.

Not if you didn't read your debit card agreement, no. Nothing you've stated wouldn't be clearly spelled out in the agreements I've seen for debit cards. I mean, I can see how this happens: looks like a credit card, must have the same protections as what people online say about credit cards, right? Nope.

If I remember correctly, debit card protections don't exist below £100, so they literally can't do it for a few quid, but they can for larger sums of money.

This isn't an example of Monzo being terrible, this is an example of debit cards being terrible.

Banks have a vested interest to work with you for purchases made on credit because it's their money. Debit purchases have no such leverage and thus have lower protections.

If it costs more than £100, use a credit card in the UK as the CC company is jointly liable for any issues, even faulty goods.

You would get your debit card within a week max. You can transfer limited amount from your original bank account to Monzo account and even on top of that you can set some restrictions on how much amount can be withdrawn and there are some special features like POTS which are very useful.

I am not saying this is the best, but even if someone steals your monzo card details, you can reqeust for a new one and your original bank card details are still safe.

Note: All this works, only if you don't use a credit card.

Edit: although I guess they'd just do it in the middle of the night so doesn't really help.

The very crude answer is to get a prepaid card and load it with enough to cover each purchase, then toss it as soon as it gets misused. Which works, but doesn't sound worth the hassle unless you seriously expect a bad outcome.

    https://www.thechangeaccount.com/