Bank of Georgia - doesn't work in Brazil at all

[JamesDonkey]

Cards of Bank of Georgia don't work in Brazil. Not in shops or PoS terminals, not in ATMs. No where at all! Zero!
The support of BoG has confirmed that it's the case and there's no way around it.

How on Earth can it be? If it was Iran or North Korea, I'd have understood. But Brazil! Even in India it works, although not in ATM, but in PoS terminals only.

 

[Fred]

Coming from the E-Commerce I can confirm that the Credit Cards in Brazil are different and can't be used basically outside Brazil.

It's the other way around as well - so nothing to blame BoG for.

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[holywater]

It is VISA or Mastercard?
Other foreign cards are not accepted too?

 

[JamesDonkey]

Fred said:
Coming from the E-Commerce I can confirm that the Credit Cards in Brazil are different and can't be used basically outside Brazil.

It's the other way around as well - so nothing to blame BoG for.
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What are you talking about? All other of my cards, including TBC from Georgia, work here. All the cards of other foreigners work here too. It's BoG that doesn't.

 

[JamesDonkey]

holywater said:
It is VISA or Mastercard?
Other foreign cards are not accepted too?
Click to expand...

It's Bank of Georgia. That's it.

 

[backpacker]

JamesDonkey said:
It's Bank of Georgia. That's it.
Click to expand...

I can confirm that BoG cards are quite tricky.

• Egypt: BoG cards do not work with local ATM.
• Philippines: BoG MasterCard does not work on local ATM and PoS. BoG AMEX does not work on LAZADA. BoG VISA does not work on Citi- and HSBC-ATM but works perfectly fine with all other local ATM and PoS.
• Bangladesh: The bank does not know about this country - none of their cards work there.

As soon as you are outside of the comfort zone of BoG you will experience problems. This is either down to simple "time out" errors due to their horrible new IT or because they do not like the country. Even if you tell them that you will travel to a specific country and ask to lift potential geoblocking they do nothing (happened when I traveled to Bangladesh).

It's more fun with BoG cards 😛

 

[JamesDonkey]

They've told me: in Brasil and Bolivia they don't work at all. In some other, 5-8 countries, they work only via PoS. In the rest - no restrictions.

More over: they've told me that after the fact. F@@@cking morons. When I was in Georgia, I asked severl people and they all told me that a card would work in any country with no problem.

 

[backpacker]

JamesDonkey said:
When I was in Georgia, I asked severl people and they all told me that a card would work in any country with no problem.
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What you experienced is all to common in Georgia. It is a general phenomenon: A lot of bal-bla with no substance.

What I wrote about my card-problems in Egypt and the Philippines is the most recent experience in 2021. Bangladesh was 2019 but it will not have changed.
It is pointless to discuss the matter with BoG because they will either deny that it is there fault that the card does not work or simply tell you that it is a "global problem" (whatever that means).

After my most recent negative experience with BoG I just closed everything with them - no need for such a useless bank.