What do You do When Your Credit Card is Lost or Stolen?
What do You do When Your Credit Card is Lost or Stolen?
- In your home country
- What to do when traveling
- Visa Global Assistance Customer Services
- How to get in touch
It is always an inconvenience when you find out that you’ve lost your Visa card or that someone stole from you. What do you do in such a case? Visa themselves offer a simple solution; get in touch with their Global Assistance Customer Services. There is a number to reach them in South Africa as well as anywhere in the world.
What to do about a lost card in your home country
Should your card get stolen or misplaced in South Africa, you need to follow the two steps below:
- Get in touch with your domicile bank immediately following the loss or theft of your card. Request them to arrange for a replacement card after reporting the incident to them.
- As a precaution in case of such an incident in future, be sure to keep the following information separately from the card:
- Name of the financial institution that issued you with the card
- Customer support number of the said institution
- Your Visa account number
What to do when travelling
If you’re out of the country on a trip and you happen to lose your card, you need to dial the Global Assistance Customer Services’ toll-free number for the destination country. Before you embark on your trip it’s wise to make a note of the Visa number of the country you’ll be travelling to and store it somewhere separate from the card.
Note that if you call the toll-free number from a hotel phone or a mobile phone, a fee may be charged, which Visa will not be liable for.
Global Assistance Customer Services
The Visa Global Assistance Customer Services is reachable from anywhere across the globe 24/7/365. Whenever you call you will find a friendly agent ready to help you in your preferred language. The agents will be able to assist you in the following ways whenever you report your card as stolen or lost:
- Organise to have a replacement mailed to you within three working days.
- Block the card to prevent fraudsters from transacting with it.
- Arrange for emergency cash to be accessed from any one of 270,000 locations around the world.
How to get in touch
If you’re in South Africa you can call 0800 990475 to reach Visa’s Global Assistance Customer Services. Alternatively you can place a collect call +1 303 967 1090 from anywhere in the world. Note that these calls must be made through a local network operator.
All info was correct at time of publishing