While everyone including me thought MCB Group was the better bank, I now have some reservations about it.
Well, when we first landed at the hotel, our MCB debit card would be declined. Embassy Suites by Hilton (Pittsburgh) does not accept cash, so, we were perplexed as to why the card would not pass through. I did not inform MCB before leaving the country, fine, but Kherin Bundhoo, ex-software eng at MCB did that and it still would not pass.
MCB chat support through Whatsapp was responsive at this time of the day, got some relative to call them at midnight to ask them to monitor the chat. The chat’s response time is some 30mins as we discovered later. Then MCB informed us that well, debit cards cannot be used for hotel check-ins as they don’t support pre-authorizations, credit cards and prepaid cards are supported though.
Fortunately, I had an SBM Bank Mauritius visa card but not with enough funds. We transferred from MCB Juice which has an instant transfer option. All was good for one day. Then we had to pay for a second reservation. Juice would not allow transfer as it was over the daily limit with a maximum of rs50k. Internet banking and juice have 2 separate limits.
Normal transfers are not instant. I then could not use Juice as well, Juice detected I was outside Mauritius and kicked me out of the app. We got Kherin Bundhoo’s relative to send us the amount needed on the SBM card.
I spent rs900 on roaming with MCB Group to confirm my phone number as staff take all the time in the world to ask you for information. I asked the 3rd staff on the 3rd call to please be quick as I am on roaming. It took only some 30 seconds i think. And, they started the foreign onboarding process which is a crappy process that de-registers you from the app and unlinks your accounts.