How to get your bank code while you are abroad.

Why this goes wrong in the first place

The failure is almost never the bank. It is the phone.

People remove their home SIM to make room for a travel one, or they put the home line into airplane mode to avoid roaming charges, and then a code is sent to a number that no longer has a network.

The second cause is a bank that will not send a code to a number it sees as roaming. This is rarer than the internet suggests, but it does happen, and it is usually a fraud rule rather than a technical limit.

The third cause is the one nobody expects. Some banks send the code through their own app as a push notification rather than by SMS, and the push needs data on the same device that is being used to log in. If the app is on the phone and the phone has no data, nothing arrives.

All five approaches below exist to remove one of those three causes.

The five approaches, ranked by how often they work

The ranking is by the probability the code reaches you on the trip you are about to take. Over a longer horizon an authenticator app is the strongest of the five, because it removes the phone network from the problem entirely.

One. Keep your home SIM active. The most reliable answer.

Leave your home SIM in the phone, with calls and texts switched on and data roaming switched off. Add a travel eSIM as a second line and let it carry the data.

Incoming SMS is free in almost every country on almost every carrier, and it does not consume mobile data. So the code arrives and it costs nothing.

This works because nothing has changed from your bank's point of view. Your number is your number, it is registered on a network, and a text sent to it is delivered.

The one setting that matters is data roaming off on the home line. That is the toggle that produces a bill. Keeping the line active for texts does not.

This is the answer for roughly nine travellers in ten, and it takes about a minute. Everything below is for the cases where it is not available.

Two. Wifi calling, set up before you leave.

Wifi calling routes your home number's calls and texts over any internet connection. Your number stays reachable even where there is no usable cellular signal for your home carrier.

It matters most in two situations. Where your home carrier has no roaming agreement in the country you are visiting, and where you are somewhere the signal is genuinely bad.

The catch is that most carriers require your phone to be on their home network to switch it on. From abroad the toggle usually fails or silently does nothing.

So turn it on at home, then test it at home. Airplane mode on, wifi on, and make a call. If the call connects, you are covered.

Fill in the emergency address the setup asks for. A wifi call to emergency services has no tower to locate you with, and the address is what gets used instead.

Three. Move the bank to an authenticator app.

This is the best permanent fix and the worst last minute one, which is why it sits third.

An authenticator app generates codes on the device itself using a shared secret and the clock. It needs no signal, no data and no phone number. It works on a plane, in a basement, and in a country your carrier has never heard of.

The reason it is not first is that it has to be enabled before you travel, and not every bank offers it. Many large retail banks offer only their own in app push approval, which needs data, or SMS, which needs a network.

In app push approval is a partial answer. It works fine over wifi or over your travel eSIM data, and for most banks it is the realistic alternative to SMS. It fails only when the login and the approval are on the same phone and that phone has no connection at all.

The table below lists what the major banks support. Set it up at least a week before you fly, because some banks impose a cooling off period on a change to security settings.

Which banks support what

Checked in August 2026 and correct as far as we can establish, but bank security options change often and vary by country and account type. Confirm with your own bank before you rely on any row here. Where a bank offers a standard authenticator app, use it.

Four. A virtual number that forwards.

A virtual number is a phone number in the cloud that receives SMS and shows it in an app or forwards it to an email address.

It genuinely solves the case where your home line is going away permanently, for example if you are moving abroad and cancelling your home contract.

It is fourth because it fails in the exact case people buy it for. A large share of banks refuse to send verification codes to numbers on virtual and voice over IP ranges, because those ranges are heavily used in account takeover fraud.

If you are going to rely on this, register the number with your bank and then test it with a real code before you leave. Do not discover the block from a hotel room.

A second problem is that it is a number you now have to keep paying for and keep secure. A verification number secured with an email password is a weaker link than the SIM it replaced.

Five. Call the bank before you fly.

The lowest technology option on this page, and the one that removes a whole class of problem in about ten minutes.

Tell them the countries and the dates. Ask three things. Whether the account has a travel flag, what happens to verification codes when your number is roaming, and what the procedure is if you are locked out abroad.

Write down the direct number for international support, because the number printed on the back of a card is often a domestic freephone that cannot be dialled from another country.

Ask whether they will accept an authenticator app or in app approval, and if they will, set it up while you are on the call.

This is fifth because it prevents rather than solves. Once you are abroad and locked out, a phone call is the slowest possible route back in.

What to do if you are already abroad and locked out

Find wifi and use it. Most banking apps allow in app approval over any internet connection, and a great many lockouts are just a phone with no data.

Try the bank's app rather than the website. The app can often approve a session that the website cannot, because it is already an enrolled device.

If you have a second device with the home SIM in it, even an old phone, put it on wifi and check for the code there.

Call international support on the direct number, not the freephone one, and use wifi calling or a messaging app to make the call.

As a last resort, most banks will verify you by video or by a branch visit at home through a person you trust. It is slow, it is annoying, and it is why the ten minute phone call before you fly is worth making.

Questions travellers ask