Stay Protected with Automatic Card Freezes

We’ve introduced a new card freezing feature that will automatically freeze a card when repeated transaction attempts are made outside its approved merchant categories. This helps identify potentially suspicious activity early and provides an additional layer of protection against unauthorised transactions.

What triggers a card to freeze?

Every card is set up with a list of approved Merchant Category Codes (MCCs) — four-digit codes that identify the type of business a merchant runs. For most customers, cards are locked to MCCs within the travel industry, since that's what the card is intended for.

Unfortunately, even with a tailored list of travel-related MCCs, fraud attempts can still occur. To help catch this early, we've introduced the following:

• A multi-use card will freeze after 3 transaction attempts at merchants outside its approved categories.
• A single-use card freezes after just 1 attempt outside its approved category, since it's designed for a single purchase.

What happens while your card is frozen?

Once a card is frozen, every new transaction is declined, even ones from a merchant within the card's approved categories — until you review the activity and unfreeze it yourself; it won't unlock on its own. The card's details and past transaction history aren't affected, since the freeze only pauses new authorisations.

Please note, we will always email the card creator or administrator as soon as a card is frozen, so it doesn't go unnoticed.

How to unfreeze your card

1. From the portal, navigate to the Payments tab.
2. Search for the card ID and open its details.
3. Review the transaction attempts that triggered the freeze to confirm whether you recognise them.
4. If you recognise the activity, select the Unfreeze card button to reactivate it. The card will go back to working as normal within its approved merchant categories.
5. If you don't recognise the attempts, do not unfreeze the card. Close it and raise a ticket with our support team so they can look into the unfamiliar activity with you.

After you unfreeze a card

The fraud protection stays active once you've unfrozen the card, meaning another 3 attempts on a multi-use card (or 1 on a single-use card) outside the approved categories will trigger a fresh freeze on that card.

This feature isn't switched on by default for every customer. If you don't have access and would like it enabled, please raise a ticket with our support team.

This feature alone will not stop fraudulent attempts.. We have other fraud prevention features you can implement within the portal to help protect against fraud. For more details, please visit the Fraud Prevention section within our Help Center.

Need help? Raise a ticket with our support team