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Notifying Credit Cards of International Travel
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My wife and I will be going to England to visit good friends of ours and so after researching the best international credit card, we settled on a Capital One card.
Now came the somewhat mind-numbing task of notifying our cards of international travel so that we wouldn’t get declined. The process for each was pretty straight forward but I’ve listed instructions for all the cards I called up. I imagine they all do pretty much the same thing but it’s always good to get concrete information.
Capital One
You can notify Capital One by calling their automated system for travel notification (1-800-214-4823) three days in advance of your trip. It’s entirely automated and you’ll need to key in your card number, security code, dates of travel, and then speak all the countries you’ll be visiting. If you have a contact number abroad, they’ll ask for that too. Afterwards, the message starts telling you about where to call if you have problems but you can hang up after that.
You can also call their customer service line (1-800-903-3637) and they will add a note on your account but the CSR said that calling the notification system alone is enough.
American Express
Call up American Express’ customer service number on the back of your credit card (it differs for the type of card you have), key in some of your personal data, and go directly to the representative. They’ll just need to know the dates of your travel, where you’ll be going, and approximately how much you plan on spending.
Citi
Call Citi at 800-950-5114, enter in your card information, then key in “0″ twice to get a representative. You’ll want to do a “travel notification,” letting Citi know to expect charges from a particular area. You’ll need to know the dates of travel and the area you’ll be visiting. If you have a contact number abroad, that’s good to have but if not they can try to contact someone here in the US.
Discover:
Call Discover at 1-800-DISCOVER (347-2683), key in your information, then key in “0″ twice to get a representative. Again, it’s simple, just let them know the dates and where you’ll be going. What was odd to learn was that Discover isn’t really accepted in Europe, the CSR told me that unless I was going to a military base, I probably wasn’t going to see it accepted anywhere… that was interesting.
And soon we will be off on our wonderful adventure!
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 By Jim |
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Bookmarked for reference…I’m traveling extensively next year. Have fun Jim!
What’s funny is this past spring my fiancee and I went on a Mediterranean cruise with his parents and sister. His parents and sister notified all their card companies of their international travel, my fiancee and I didn’t. So naturally, their cards got cut off the very first day and ours were active the whole trip.
I traveled to Australia in October and never notified the credit card company. I primarily used a Capital One Platinum card, and I didn’t have any problems at all. That card is nice because they don’t charge any fee for currency conversion.
And if you forget to call in advance, remember that if you need to contact your credit card company while traveling, most will accept collect calls.
If you regularly check access your account online, you can also use the same site to notify the companies. Both Chase and my local bank have a section online for notification of travel. Much quicker than the phone I think.
This was about the only smart thing I did on my last vacation. I’m usually much, much too Lazy to call and talk to customer service about this. Sometimes it seems I get passed around 2 or 3 times and – it’s not how I want to spend my day.