MONEI Review

MONEI is a payment platform from Málaga, Spain, launched in 2015 by Alex Saiz Verdaguer. Since 2021 it has been a payment institution authorised by the Banco de España (register number 6911), and it acquires Visa and Mastercard payments itself, so the merchant contract is with MONEI. As of October 2026 it sells one plan, MONEI One. Online card payments cost Interchange++ (the card schemes' pass-through fees plus a 0.10% acquiring fee) and a MONEI fee of 0.90% + €0.25. The percentage falls to 0.60%, 0.25% and then 0.15% as monthly volume passes €500,000, €1 million and €5 million. In-person card payments through the MONEI Pay phone app cost Interchange++ plus 0.25%, with no fixed fee. There is a daily platform fee of €0.15, a €0.20 fee per payout and a €15 fee per chargeback. Bizum, Spain's mobile payment scheme, is switched on by default, and MONEI can route card payments to a merchant's own bank terminal or Stripe account. It is only open to businesses registered in Spain or Andorra, it does not take American Express, support is by chat and email only, and a new account's online sales are held for 30 days before the first payout.

Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using MONEI’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.

What MONEI is

MONEI is a Spanish payment company headquartered in Málaga. The company says Alexandre (Alex) Saiz Verdaguer founded it in 2015, and a January 2021 profile of the company describes it as five years old at the time. MONEI began as a product of microapps S.L., a Málaga app developer, and launched in September 2015. The company that runs it today, MONEI Digital Payments, S.L., is a newer entity, incorporated in October 2020. On 14 June 2021 MONEI announced that the Banco de España had granted it a payment institution licence, which it says took two years of work. It is entered in the Banco de España's register of payment institutions under number 6911. A copy of that register gives the entry date as 20 September 2021.

MONEI started as a payment gateway for Spanish online shops. At launch, Shopify and the Spanish trade press described it as the first Spanish payment gateway integrated with Shopify. It now sells online card acquiring, Bizum and other local payment methods, a phone-based in-person terminal app, payment links, subscriptions and an orchestration layer from one dashboard. MONEI also runs a side project in digital currency, a euro stablecoin called EURM. It does not affect how a merchant account works.

Why we list MONEI as a platform

MONEI holds the merchant relationship itself. Its documentation lists its own Mastercard ICA and Visa BIN identifiers, describes MONEI as the merchant's "payment institution and acquirer", and says the 0.10% acquiring fee in its pricing is MONEI's own acquirer markup. The merchant signs MONEI's services agreement, MONEI does the KYC checks under its Banco de España licence, and MONEI sets the settlement period and reserve. That is a platform or acquirer in our taxonomy, not a payment facilitator sitting on someone else's acquiring. MONEI also works as a gateway, because merchants can route payments to their own bank or to Stripe, but most merchants use its built-in acquiring.

What it costs

All figures below come from MONEI's pricing page and fee documentation, in euros, as of October 2026. Every merchant is on one plan, MONEI One. Each card payment carries two charges, which MONEI always shows separately. Interchange++ is the issuing bank's interchange plus the Visa or Mastercard scheme fee, plus a flat 0.10% acquiring fee. It is deducted from your settlements. The MONEI fee is billed on a weekly invoice. MONEI says payment and refund fees are VAT-exempt. Technology add-ons are priced before VAT unless marked exempt.

• Online cards and wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Click to Pay): Interchange++ plus 0.90% + €0.25 below €500,000 a month; 0.60% + €0.25 from €500,000 to €1 million; 0.25% + €0.25 from €1 million to €5 million; 0.15% + €0.25 above €5 million.
• In-person cards and Tap to Pay: Interchange++ plus 0.25%, no fixed fee.
• Bizum online: €0.17 acquiring fee plus a 1.29% + €0.25 MONEI fee, with volume discounts for high-volume merchants on request.
• Daily platform fee: €0.15 a day, billed only for weeks in which you process at least one payment.
• Payouts: €0.20 per payout. Chargebacks: €15, plus €10 to contest, neither refunded if you win.
• Refunds: no MONEI fee, but the original payment's Interchange++ (or Bizum's €0.17) is not returned, and Bancontact, Multibanco and MB WAY refunds carry their own flat fees of €0.24, €0.10 and €0.25.
• Bring your own acquirer: 0.20% of the volume routed to it, instead of the per-transaction fee.
• No account setup fee, no monthly minimum, and no charge for API access or orchestration rules. Multibanco and MB WAY together, and Bancontact separately, carry one-time €10 setup fees.

MONEI publishes typical Interchange++ ranges for consumer cards over €5: 0.4% to 0.5% for Spanish cards, 0.5% to 0.7% for other EU cards and 2.5% to 3% for cards from outside the EU. Here is an illustration for a shop taking €10,000 a month online in 200 card payments of €50, mostly on Spanish consumer cards. The MONEI fee would be €90 plus 200 × €0.25 = €140. Interchange++ at MONEI's own 0.4% to 0.5% estimate adds €40 to €50. The platform fee adds about €4.50 and four or five weekly payouts add about €1. That totals roughly €186 to €196, or about 1.9% to 2% of sales. The fixed €0.25 is the part to watch. On a €10 online sale the MONEI fee alone is €0.34, or 3.4%, before interchange. On a €200 sale it is €2.05, or about 1%.

How it works

You sign up in the MONEI dashboard and can test integrations before activation. Activation is a KYC application: business details, the legal representative and beneficial owners, the IBAN for payouts, two-step authentication and the services agreement. MONEI says most applications are approved automatically in about 10 minutes, and those needing manual review get an answer within one to two business days. Cards and wallets are switched on at approval. Bizum follows automatically, usually within 48 to 72 working hours, provided your website is public.

Online, MONEI connects through plugins for Shopify, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, Wix, Adobe Commerce and Salesforce Commerce Cloud, a hosted payment page, embeddable components, or its REST and GraphQL APIs. In person, the MONEI Pay app takes contactless cards on an NFC Android phone or an iPhone XS or later, and QR code payments in a browser. Accounts charge in euros by default. MONEI enables other currencies, most often US dollars and pounds sterling, case by case. It accepts Visa, Mastercard, JCB, Diners Club International, Discover and UnionPay, but not American Express. Its documentation says it does not offer SEPA Direct Debit, although the website menu lists a SEPA Direct Debit beta.

Payouts, reserves and holds

MONEI pays out to your IBAN on bank working days only. The default settlement period for online sales is D+7, so most accounts receive about one payout a week. MONEI can shorten this to D+1 as an account builds a low-risk record. Its documentation says a shorter period is "earned, not requested", and you cannot choose it at sign-up. Online sales from a new account are not paid until 30 days after the first sale, then everything from that period is paid at once. Each payment method and each store is paid out separately, and each payout costs €0.20.

MONEI also holds a rolling reserve, 10% of each settlement by default, adjusted to your risk profile. The reserve from one settlement is released with the next one. MONEI says lower-risk accounts may have a smaller reserve or none. Payouts can be suspended for unpaid invoices, missing KYC documents, a risk review, customer complaints, high chargebacks, selling restricted products, or a seizure order from the Spanish Tax Agency or Social Security. In-person card payments are treated differently: they are paid the next day from the first sale, with no 30-day wait and no reserve.

Contract and terms

MONEI markets MONEI One as having no lock-in, no setup fee and no monthly minimum. Because the platform fee is charged only in weeks with payments, an idle account costs nothing to keep. The services agreement is signed electronically during activation and then stored in the dashboard under Settings → Legal documents. It is not posted on the public website, so we could not read its notice period or any terms on reserves after closure. Ask for a copy before you activate if those matter to you. MONEI's public SLA promises 99.99% monthly uptime for the dashboard and APIs, with service credits against future bills if it falls short.

Who can use it and what it will not accept

As of October 2026, MONEI accepts only businesses registered in Spain or Andorra, however they plan to use it. Andorran merchants come through the bank Creand, which sets its own pricing. MONEI's documentation quotes Creand's fee as €0.24 + 3.92% per card transaction. MONEI says it plans to open in Portugal, France and Italy by the end of 2026, then Mexico, Brazil and Chile. Its built-in acquiring prohibits adult content, weapons, cannabis, gambling outside official Spanish bodies, prescription medicines, tobacco and smoking products, crowdfunding, timeshare and auctions, among others. It accepts alcohol sellers with a licence, CBD cosmetics meeting EU rules, and dropshipping. MONEI says some prohibited categories may still be able to use it with their own acquirer. MONEI's pricing FAQ says high-risk merchants such as CBD sellers can wait up to 30 days for payouts.

Support

Support is by chat in the dashboard and documentation, or by email. MONEI's documentation says there is no phone support and no contact form. As a regulated payment institution it runs a formal complaints process. Complaints go to its Customer Service, which must answer payment-service complaints within 15 working days, and from there to the Banco de España. The documentation is unusually thorough and recently maintained: the fee and payout pages we read were updated in September and October 2026.

Reputation

MONEI's public review record is small. Its WooCommerce plugin on WordPress.org had 45 ratings averaging 5 out of 5 when we checked in October 2026 (43 five-star, 2 four-star), with 500+ active installations. On Trustpilot, monei.com had 17 reviews and a TrustScore of 3.2. That score diverges from the star distribution, which was 29% five-star and 71% one-star. The most recent one-star reviews appear to be complaints from shoppers about purchases from businesses that use MONEI, not from MONEI's own merchants, and MONEI had not replied to negative reviews. We found no lawsuits, fines or regulatory enforcement actions naming MONEI. The company publishes customer testimonials from Google on its own site, but we did not rely on those.

Who MONEI suits

MONEI makes most sense for a business registered in Spain that sells online at mid-sized or larger tickets and wants Bizum alongside cards without a second contract. It also suits businesses that want to see exactly what they pay for interchange, and those that already hold a bank TPV Virtual or Stripe account and want to route between them. Its in-person pricing is attractive for low-volume sellers who can take payments on a phone. It suits shops selling many cheap items online less well, because of the €0.25 fixed fee. It also suits less well any business that needs American Express, phone support or quick access to its first month of online sales. And it is not available at all outside Spain and Andorra.