Each financial institution has a list of countries where their stuff doesn’t work, and Neo is no exception. From a user perspective, not being able to pay and not knowing that you won’t be able to pay can be a huge hassle.
Imagine being stuck in a foreign country with no access to funds.
What can be done better?
One improvement would be to warn travellers that their card won’t work in the country where they are going before they end up in a situation where their card doesn’t work. Fortunately, Neo has a list of unsupported countries on the website (many banks don’t have that), but users won’t discover it unless they specifically search for it.
An alternative would be to create ways to proactively notify users when it makes sense, e.g. through a push notifications in the app when the app detects that the user bought a ticket to an unsupported country or other user behaviour that would suggest that this warning would be useful to provide. The app could then suggest helpful actions for the user, e.g. directing them to the nearest ATM to withdraw cash or offering users to transfer money to a different account.
For declined online purchases in unsupported countries, the app could provide a reason why the transaction was declined instead of leaving the users guessing or calling support.
Countries where you can’t use your card
Here’s a list of countries where your transactions won’t be processed. These blocks are in place due to sanctions and political reasons. This list is subject to change.
- Belarus
- Central African Republic
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Guatemala
- Haiti
- Iran
- Iraq
- Lebanon
- Libya
- Moldova
- Myanmar
- Nicaragua
- North Korea
- Russia
- Somalia
- South Sudan
- Sri Lanka
- Sudan
- Syria
- Ukraine
- Venezuela
- Yemen
- Zimbabwe
