Emergency Cash Helps Cardholder as 500 Mile Pilgrimage Goes Awry

When a French cardholder underwent the Way of St. James pilgrimage from France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, close to the end of her trek, her belongings were stolen including her passport.  She didn’t have any cash or credit cards to continue the journey. She contacted her bank to report the theft and then was redirected to MasterCard to receive Emergency Cash. Without her passport, receiving an emergency cash advance proved difficult so we quickly managed to find a bank nearby that would fulfill a cash advance.  After only a few hours, the cardholder had her cash in hand and was able to finish the last leg of her trip with haste.

Surprisingly a few weeks later we received a postcard from the cardholder thanking us for helping her complete the Way of St. James pilgrimage.

All too often, we get calls from cardholders who are frantic because they had their card lost or stolen while travelling. Imagine being in an unfamiliar country where you don’t speak the language and you realize all your personal belongings including your credit cards, cash, ID and passport are stolen.  What would you do? Hopefully, you had taken some preventive measures and jotted down your bank’s phone numbers and card information in a safe place, took a photo of your passport ID, and kept some cash in your shoe.  But, if you didn’t you’d probably find yourself making many phone calls to report your lost items and perhaps missing a flight.

The good news is there’s assistance.  Most credit cards have emergency card benefits which provides a free replacement card shipped to almost anywhere in the world within 24-48 hours.  And if your replacement card cannot arrive quickly enough, you can request an emergency cash advance which wires money via Western Union to you.  MasterCard has toll-free Emergency Service numbers that operate 24/7 and will assist you and follow-up to ensure your travel plans are minimally impacted.

Through our Emergency Service we will also check to see if your credit card carries other benefits such as ID Theft Resolution or Travel Assistance which assists in replacing passports, IDs, credit card replacements, as well as notifying credit bureaus of lost cards. With one phone call to MasterCard we can assist with all these benefits and notify every bank of your lost MasterCard cards to put a hold on the accounts.