What to do if you’ve lost your bank card

We’re all familiar with the two most common causes of a stomach drop: plummeting from the steepest point of a rollercoaster, and opening your wallet to find you’ve lost your bank card. Whether stolen or misplaced, losing a card is a hassle that has to be dealt with immediately, but it’s not necessarily a cause for panic (unlike the scary parts of a rollercoaster ride). Today’s digital technologies make for a swift response and recovery following a lost bank card. Banks and card issuing companies will take care of most of the hard work for you, but there are still a few things you’ll need to do to set the wheels in motion. Luckily, our blog post on what to do if you’ve lost your bank card will lay out these steps clearly for you, with a section on recovering your Qonto card.  

If you’ve checked all your pockets, bags, hidden card slots, and retraced your steps, you need to assume the card is lost. And if the card is lost, that means it can be picked up and used by anyone who finds it, so step one is contacting your bank and blocking the card. This can usually be done over the phone or via chat, or in some cases on the app on your phone. Some banks and financial service providers offer the option to temporarily block your card. This is a good option if you suspect you’ve merely misplaced it around the house or your 4 year old ran off with it for some unknown reason. 

It’s important to clearly note both the time at which you believe you lost the card, and the time it was blocked. Along with any fraudulent transactions, keep all this information in a document or notebook so you can refer to it quickly if needed, when dealing with your financial institution. 

This doesn’t have to be done immediately, but by the next day would be ideal. Back up your call to your financial institution with a written confirmation via email or chat of what has happened, with the date and time included. Your card issuer may request confirmed information about the lost card, which you’ll want to be able to provide with authentication from your bank. 

Over the coming days while the bank is investigating your case, keep an eye on your account and monitor the progress being made by the bank. This is because banks typically have ten days to credit your account with any fraudulent charges, and another three days to report their findings on your case. If the bank takes longer to get back to you, they should credit you with the missing amount until the issue is resolved. They then have 90 days to resolve the issue

With a debit card, the situation is different because debit cards don’t have the same fraud protection as credit cards. There are laws limiting the liability on fraudulent charges on a stolen credit card, but they depend on you reporting quickly once the card is missing. In Germany, the limit of liability on the customer is €150. This is why you have to act quickly and stop the thief from making too many purchases, so that it doesn’t exceed the liability amount. 

Losing your Qonto Card won’t be too much of a hassle. With our app features and dynamic customer support team, you’ll be protected and back in control of your card soon. 

Most of us will experience losing our card and one point or another—some more than others due to bad luck or absent-mindedness. Let’s go through a couple of things you can do to soften the blow when it happens, or reduce the likelihood of it happening.

Write down your card number, expiry, and CVC and store it somewhere secure and readily accessible. This way, you can provide it to the relevant authorities at a moment’s notice. 

Open your app regularly to check your transactions. This might end up being how you realise you’ve lost your card, rather than the next time you open your wallet, and you might catch any fraudulent transactions much earlier. 

Not only in your wallet, but keep your card in the same spot in your wallet. If possible, keep everything in the same spot in your wallet so you know immediately where to look and you know if your card has gone missing. A card floating between bag, wallet, and pocket is just asking for panic-stricken moments of assumed card loss.

Having lost your bank card often causes a panic, but thankfully that panic is short-lived nowadays. Addressing the problem immediately and writing everything down is likely to stop the headache of having a lost card before it even happens.