A Dog Ate My… Bank Card: What To Do When You Lose Your Bank Card While Traveling

Yeah, there she was chewing away, yup just chewing away at a piece of plastic. I never thought plastic could taste so good. Apparently to her it’s amazing but unfortunately for me it is a flavor she enjoys. What am I talking about?

I know you have done it before. You were sitting down enjoying some amazing food and then you go to pay. As you get back to your hotel, you realize you do not have your card. Yup, you lost it. Something like that has happened to me too… kind of. Except… I did not really lose my card. More so a sweet adorable and innocent dog ate my bank card. I hoped Leyla really enjoyed the new desert, but now I was without a functioning card to pull out cash from the ATM. So what do I do?

Well the first thing I do is to call my bank and order a new card. They suggested getting a new one at the bank, except I would be traveling through Colombia for 3 months and that was not going to work for me. So now they are going to send me a new card, but unfortunately it would take two weeks to get to me. Until then I could not go to the ATM or pay for much. So what do I do?

Wire Transfer To Yourself

I know exactly what to do because something like this happened to me before. No I do not have a habit of feeding dogs bank cards. But, I have accidentally left my bank card in an ATM while traveling in Argentina. So what do I do? I figured I could wire transfer myself the money. That is what I did using a service called Xoom.

Using Xoom

What was needed? I needed to know some basic things. One of which was my Bank routing number, and bank account number. It also required that I make an account on Xoom’s website. Then I chose the amount of money I wanted to send to myself. I checked a list of pickup points and headed my way to pick up my money. When picking up my money It required my Passport ID. The process took less than 24 hours. It was great I now had money to spend in Argentina.

So now that a doggy has eaten my card while in Colombia, I would use Xoom again. Except, one problem, Xoom requires a Colombian ID or Colombian residence visa and I do not have either. I guess it is required to prevent the cartels from laundering money. So now what? There are alternatives, like Western Union.

Using Western Union

Western Union’s process was not as fast as Xoom’s service. Western Union required a 3 day wait period for the money to be transferred. That meant a lot more budgeting needed to be done. So what was required? The process was the same as Xoom’s. It required My banks routing number and my bank account number. I already had an account on Western Union from previous gifts to friends in the past. The next step was to wait. During my wait process I found a pickup point at the local mall. After my 3 day wait I had money to use. The process was easy, but like I said I had to budget for the 3 working days (Sundays do not count, especially in Colombia).

So what can you do when you a cute doggy eats your bank card? Do what I did, transfer the money to yourself. Check out Xoom or Western Union as a great way to do such a thing. Anything crazy like this happen to you? What did you do? Perhaps you have questions? Leave a comment below, send me a tweet on twitter, or post on my facebook. Heck even send us a message. Let me know so I can help. Happy travels