• Ideas

  • Country whitelist for cards could be improved

I want a secure card, but the need to whitelist a country before being able to use the card there is a feature that is ill-designed.


Say, I’m traveling to a foreign country and driving through a few countries on a road trip. I’m a new customer and I try to pay. Card rejected. It’s embarrassing. Without roaming, it’s impossible to know what happened. Woth roaming, it would be, but fixing this on the spot is even more embarrassing as other customers wait behind me.


It’s just one of these things that sound smart, but when you are a new customer it ruins your trust in the “it just works” factor of bunq and is something that never happens with other banks.

    Hi there Tobi 🙋,

    Thanks for sharing this feedback with us! It is always helpful for us to see what you wish to be improved 👍.

    I can understand why this would be a handy feature to improve upon! We can see if some other bunkers think similar 💡.

    Cheers!

      Is there any way for bunq to detect that the user is in a country that has not been white listed?

        Hey there Amir 😊

        When making a card payment, the terminal actually has to contact your bank account in order to do the payment.

        So each individual terminal is unique and will show the country that it is located in 👍.

        Hope this helps clear that up!

          I love the allow by country feature. I love the fact you can set time periods per county. But I can see how some would find it annoying.


          How about allowing by region as well as by country. I.e. allow Asia, allow Europe, allow south America?

            I meant detect that a user is in a different country based on IP address or something. So when the user opens the app, he could get a warning mentioning he is in a country that has not been white listed yet. Just a thought.

              Yes this is a pain point. I was in the US and then quickly moved to Zurich and then back to Netherlands and had a couple of embarrassing moments where my card was declined. Would be nice to have a pop up asking for country approval before the embarrassment:(

                Well, if you don’t like the whitelisting you could just enable all countries indefinitely.

                Anyway, I like the notification idea from the other replies. The moment you cross borders you get an alert from bunq advising you to update the whitelist.

                  13 days later

                  Agree, Revolut asks forpermission to track my location (pretty intrusive) and they say they use it for fraud prevention, likely checking if your phone is where your card is being used. Not sure if that's a good wabutbut maybe avaluable thought direction for bunq. Security is important, but whitelisting stuff just feels awfully low-tech.

                    Ain't nobody got time for that! :D I'm not worried about me personally, but rather about the bad onboarding experience for new bunqers. It's one of these things that might make them ditch the card.


                    It's a problem that doesn't exist with any other credit card I know of. Even the major banks don't require you to call to unblock for foreign transactions.

                      Why not a simple location check inside the bunq app? When the app detects it is started up in a country which isn't white listed it can ask if you want to allow this country. That way your cards will follow you when you are traveling. Simple to implement I think.

                        +1, or check if the phone is in the same region as the pin terminal!

                          Makes sense. Would be much friendlier than today, especially since data roaming now is free across the EU.

                            7 months later

                            So great that this has been improved now!

                              Can you elaborate what the improvement looks like? What has been changed in the country whitelisting process?

                                One improvement is that you can now whitelist entire Europe and the entire world with with button.

                                  Exactly, you can now whitelist continents and the works in one go. This gives people who travel a one-click option while giving room to those who don't to whitelist specific countries when they go there. Love it!

                                    2 months later

                                    Hi @Roelof-Blue-Owl#34864 👋

                                    This depends if you're using the old card based whitelisting or global whitelisting. (New user automatically use global whitelisting.)

                                    Card based 💳:

                                    • Open the cars tab and navigate to the card in question
                                    • Scroll down and you should see a section to allow countries

                                    Global 🌍:

                                    • Tap on your profile picture in the upper right corner
                                    • Tap security and settings
                                    • Open 'Allowed Countries'

                                    Also see this topic:
                                    https://together.bunq.com/d/2815-can-i-use-my-bunq-card-in-foreign-countries

                                    Hope this helps, have a nice day! 🌈

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