Freezing debit card transactions
Please note: If you have recently started using your new Debit Mastercard®, you will have to re-apply debit card payment control settings previously applied on your old Visa card.
If you are a personal and / or business customer with an active debit card, you can freeze and unfreeze your card via the mobile app and through Digital Banking.
This gives you the ability to freeze & unfreeze your debit card in real-time, and can be accessed via 'Manage my card' in the mobile app or under 'Manage your debit card' in Digital Banking.
The freeze prevents use of your debit card and any payments being made on your debit card.
For example, if you have misplaced your debit card you can instantly freeze your card so that it cannot be used until you have found it or until you have ordered a new one.
If you have an active debit card with the full freeze on, you can still access cash by using the 'Get Cash' feature on the mobile app.
Find out what Get Cash is and how to use it on What is Get Cash and how do I use it?.
To freeze your debit card in the mobile app, all you need to do is:
To freeze / unfreeze your debit card through the mobile app you need to:
To freeze your debit card using Digital Banking:
The following transactions will be declined when a debit card is frozen:
Please note: If you have recently started using your new Debit Mastercard®, you will have to re-apply card payment controls via the mobile 'Manage My Card' section if you have previously applied them on your old Visa card.
You can choose to freeze and unfreeze different payment types on your debit card in real-time using the mobile app.
You can freeze any combination of these card payment types:
If you have Notifications set 'On', you will receive a notification for a payment that is blocked by a control.
The notification will be presented to you on your phone, and also in your app, in the notification centre.
You should go to the Notification Centre in your app and turn On notifications.
To receive notifications, you will need to have set them On in the mobile app. You will then receive notifications of declined transactions for debit card payments prevented as a result of a debit card freeze, or individual payment types being frozen.
The decline notification should be received straight after a payment has been attempted. Only one type of freeze will be referenced in any decline notification, even if multiple payment types are frozen.
Occasionally you will not receive notifications of decline, as a result of network connectivity issues or the mobile app being unavailable.
Some Merchants make more than one attempt to authorise a payment, so occasionally you will receive more than one notification of decline.
The Chip & PIN card payment control prevents all debit card payments attempted in-person (e.g. in a physical shop) via Chip & PIN, Chip & signature, or magstripe / swipe.
Please note, this control will not prevent the below:
The In-Person card payment control prevents all debit card payments attempted in-person (e.g. in a physical shop) via Chip & PIN, Chip & signature, magstripe / swipe and contactless (card and devices – through Apple Pay and Google Pay™).
Please note, this control will not prevent the below:
The Contactless card payment control prevents all your debit card contactless payments, both card and device based (I.e. Apple Pay and Google Pay™).
This includes:
The Contactless card payment control prevents all your debit card contactless payments, both Card and device based (I.e. Apple Pay and Google Pay™).
This includes:
For your debit card with the Contactless control set to on, when you first tap your debit card accessing a transport system the payment will not be declined because the transport merchant does not take payment instantly.
At the end of the day, which may be after you have completed your journey, the transport merchant will attempt to take the payment from your debit card and at which point will be prevented because you've got the Contactless control on.
Subsequently the next time you attempt to gain access to that same transport system by tapping your card, you will be denied access at that point because that specific transport merchant has recognised your card from before. You should contact you relevant Transport Authority, usually via their app or on-line, to allow your card to be accepted again.
If you want to use that particular transport system, you can toggle off the control in the mobile app in real-time providing you have internet access.
For your debit card with the In-Person or Contactless control set to on, when you first tap your debit card accessing a transport system the payment will not be declined because the transport merchant does not take payment instantly.
At the end of the day, which may be after you have completed your journey, the transport merchant will attempt to take the payment from your debit card and at which point will be prevented because you've got the In-Person or Contactless control on.
Subsequently the next time you attempt to gain access to that same transport system by tapping your card, you will be denied access at that point because that specific transport merchant has recognised your card from before. You should contact you relevant Transport Authority, usually via their app or on-line, to allow your card to be accepted again.
If you want to use that particular transport system, you can toggle off the control in the mobile app in real-time providing you have internet access.
Turning on the Online and Telephone card payment control prevents the following payments on your debit card:
These may also include the likes of: (please see our Glossary of terms below for more details about these debit card transaction types)
The Subscriptions card payment control prevents Recurring / Instalment / Subscription payments linked to your debit card.
There may be instances where Retailers have described the payment as Subscription but have not requested the payment as a Recurring / Instalment / Subscription payment so these will not be declined when the Control is set On.
Please note, this control will not prevent the below:
There may be occasions when the Merchant is not presenting a payment as a Recurring / Instalment / Subscription payment which is necessary for the decline to take place as a result of the control being set On, so these payments will be authorised.
Unfortunately this is not possible with this control at the moment.
The International In-person card payment control prevents all your International / non-domestic Point of Sale transactions initiated via chip & PIN, chip & signature, magstripe / swipe and contactless.
All contactless transactions would be blocked, both card and device based (I.e. Apple Pay and Google Pay).
The control also blocks all International ATM transactions (i.e. international cash withdrawals via an ATM).
Please note, this control will not prevent the below:
The Gambling Merchant card payment control prevents all your debit card transactions with Gambling Merchants.
This includes:
Please note, this control will not prevent the below:
The Gambling Merchant card payment control prevents all your debit card transactions with Gambling Merchants.
This includes:
Please note, this control will not prevent the below:
Once you turn off the Gambling Merchant Control, you will need to wait for 48 hours before you can make gambling payments.
This 'cooling off' period is in place to help you gamble responsibly, and to support financial wellbeing. The date and time the 'cooling off' period will end will be shown under the Gambling Merchant control in your mobile app.
You can turn the Gambling Control back On at any time during the 'cooling off' period. The control will work in the expected way.
Once you turn off the Gambling Merchant Control again, you will need to wait for a new 48 hours period before you can make gambling payments. There is no way to override or change this time period, either by a customer on their app or a member of staff supporting a customer.
All debit card payments will be prevented and you may receive a notification of decline as a result of a card payment control being set On.
Card payment controls will not be visible on the app once a full debit card freeze is toggled on. They become visible again when the debit card is unfrozen.
In the unlikely event that you lose connection to the internet when toggling a freeze on, you have a number of options to make card payment controls re-appear again.
You can do either of the following:
No, because freeze covers a wider range of payments that the card payment controls do not cover, such as domestic ATM withdrawals.
If your card is renewed or replaced from Visa to Visa or from Visa to Mastercard, you will need to reset your controls on your new card. If your card is renewed/replaced from Mastercard to Mastercard, your controls will be carried over from the old card to your new one.
When you complete a form for example in a catalogue and you mail the form in the post with your details on it.
When you are purchasing goods or services over the phone and providing your debit card details to make your payment.
Is a type of e-commerce payment whereby your debit card is linked to your Paypal account.
When you have set up your debit card details in an app and they are then used by the app on your device to make a payment.
Is when you use your debit card to set up any regular subscription payment. The merchant may do a one-off check on the debit card there and then, and then the regular payments will occur.
Some online merchants, for security reasons, create tokens from your debit card details instead of retaining your full debit card details. The merchant validates the customer's card details when generating a token and initiates a £0.00 transaction. These transactions will be blocked by an e-commerce control set On and the customer will receive a notification on this decline.
For on-line payments One Time Passwords will continue to be requested to be actioned by the customer, it is only after this point that the control will step in and make the decline.
When will I need to approve my transactions using my mobile app?
What are the different balances in Digital Banking?
How do I register for Digital Banking if I don't have a debit card?
Why do I get a message that my customer number entered has been disabled?
I haven't received my Digital Banking activation code, what can I do?
Cora can help with a wide range of queries and show you how to do your banking.
