Authorizing Cards for use in USA

[tspill]

I have never in 35 years contacted my card issuer on this and never once had a problem.

[Markus]

Originally Posted by dan223

I think that is more the shop side putting that restrictions in. Some places don't like top up cards, as they are often used for fraud/money laundering.

See more...

Ah yeah, that makes sense.

I would take 80/20% split of my money in favour of the Revolut card but I am concerned that for whatever reason it doesn't work a lot of the time - this especially for the reason I got it for using with the UOR and MDE apps. They both linked fine now but I still can't ease my worries until I use it for the first time on the apps. So I'll likely take a 50/50 split of money to card just to be safe.

[dan223]

Originally Posted by Markus

Ah yeah, that makes sense.

I would take 80/20% split of my money in favour of the Revolut card but I am concerned that for whatever reason it doesn't work a lot of the time - this especially for the reason I got it for using with the UOR and MDE apps. They both linked fine now but I still can't ease my worries until I use it for the first time on the apps. So I'll likely take a 50/50 split of money to card just to be safe.

See more...

Personally I'd recommend another card, either credit (halifax clarity, barclays reward), or chase debit card. You can then use in tandem with your revolut or just use it as a backup.

[Orlandoguy]

I always call and make them put a note on my file that I’m away , you really don’t have to anymore but it gives me peace of mind

[Bozza]

Nope.

I consider it something of my parents' generation along with paper flight tickets, travellers cheques and people being allowed to smoke on flights.

[kk20]

We didnt for our clarity. All fine. Contactless also worked after the first PIN use here.

[sha9]

I definitely wouldn’t for Revolut. It’s designed as a currency card so I’m assuming they expect me to use it abroad!

[MrPenguin]

Generally it’s always fine to just use your card abroad.

It’s pointless ringing as blocking is all done by computer and they’ll tell you they’ll put a note on your file but they won’t lol.

A good tip if you want even better chance of a transaction not being blocked (although slim chance regardless) is to use the card at the airport as it creates a trail for the computer. It’s logical that if you’ve used it at the airport you’ll then be using it abroad.

Wife works in banking.

[kk20]

Possibly not true for some cards. our debit card is a cumberland building society visa. There are no transaction fees on that one either so we do use it on holidays occasionally. That one does need to be told in advance: from experience, forgot one year and it was blocked at the first auchan we used in lille, the same one we always stop at after the ferry only time we didnt phone up beforehand.

We arent using that one this time, but we do tend to use that one in europe.

Cumberland are a bit more backward than some building society and banks though.

[daytonababe]

Originally Posted by Markus

It'll be my first time using my Revolut card in the USA but the card is like a pre-paid top-up card so you just transfer money from your bank to the card, exchange to $ (is what I do, but if you wish, you can leave £ on the card and accept the exchange rate at the time of each transaction when abroad) and then spend whatever you have loaded onto the card. Any transaction won't go through your bank at any point so no worries about them getting involved and declining/blocking the card.

The only issue is if the Revolut card does get declined in a few situations as I've read on here, such as Walmart.

See more...

When you use the self service tills in Walmart to sometimes rejects your card. This happened to me with Starling, but only 3 times out of the very many times we visited .

It’s easily solved anyway , Employee comes over rings up the balance, takes you over to the customer service desk and runs it through the till and you pay as normal.