Credit card companies closely scrutinize any transaction made in another state or country using one of their cards, and may consider any purchase suspicious activity, declining charges as they believe fraudulence is taking place. By setting a travel notice and informing card issuer of planned trips they may help ensure charges don’t get declined by mistake.
Notifying Your Card Issuers
Many card issuers provide travelers with the ability to inform them when they’re traveling so that they won’t accidentally decline purchases made outside their normal geographic region while on vacation. By notifying your issuer of this fact, they can avoid mistakenly declining purchases made outside your usual geography that might otherwise fall within their purchase area while away on holiday.
Most card issuers provide travel alerts through online account portals or phone services, to give them peace of mind that you are transacting at the destination you reported and reduce fraudulent activity.
Bank of America doesn’t require or allow its cardholders to notify them about travel notifications, but it never hurts to do so. Notifying them early could save time and frustration while potentially saving you money by helping to ensure any incorrect declines don’t cost too much; and can unblock charges quickly without needing to navigate an endless phone tree or wait on hold; the key is in informing them beforehand rather than after.
Setting Up a Travel Notice
Travel notifications allow credit card issuers to keep an eye on account activity when cards are used away from home. Without such notifications, your card provider could deem charges made from unknown locations as suspicious and decline them as transactions.
Travel notifications can usually be submitted by visiting your credit card company’s website or app. Some services allow this directly from their online accounts while others require calling in advance or visiting in person to notify them of your plans.
Some credit card companies no longer require travel notifications due to improved fraud detection strategies, but many cardholders still utilize this feature while traveling abroad. If possible, always have at least one backup credit card from another issuer with access to different payment networks so as not to run into trouble should your primary card get declined for any reason.
Getting a Travel Notification
All top card issuers advise their users to register a travel notification prior to any trips abroad, in order to reduce the chance of an unusual purchase being flagged as fraudulent by anti-fraud departments and reduce any false positives when purchasing items outside your normal spending patterns.
Citi allows travelers to set travel notifications using its mobile app by inputting your trip start and end dates; Citi will then update its system so if you use your card while traveling it won’t be flagged as suspicious. Discover allows similar settings via online account by selecting card and inputting dates of trip. Some top cards also rely on other strategies besides travel notifications to anticipate when people will travel; such as tracking purchases habits or GPS technology to detect your shopping locations.
Getting a Travel Alert
Planning a trip requires many details, from airfare and hotel reservations to packing, but don’t forget to notify your credit card issuer of your plans or you could end up facing declined transactions and additional fees.
Travel advisories typically don’t mean “don’t travel,” but rather are intended to inform travelers of any safety or security concerns in a particular country. This is particularly applicable during extraordinary circumstances such as COVID-19 pandemic, in which governments issued travel advisories warning travelers against certain nations until disease risk had subsided.
Setup a travel notification can reduce the chances that your card transactions are flagged as suspicious and declined while traveling. Furthermore, setting one up prevents you from needing to call your card issuers directly with any unusual activity occurring while away from home and navigate their phone tree/wait on hold system for resolution.
