🚨 Why Are Old Credit Card Charges Reappearing In Colombia?

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:01]Did you open your bank statement, your banking app over the last 24 hours and see a bunch of transactions that you maybe did back in January that are getting redone now? Ain't alone. So, let's talk about this because it is deep.

[00:00:32]Now, imagine opening your banking app and just seeing a charge from January.

[00:00:37]It's coming up again here at the end of May. And it's not a hotel. It's not a rental card. It's not a security deposit. It's a restaurant, a grocery store, something completely ordinary that you purchased months ago that you thought was finished already. Now, imagine you're not the only one because over the last 24 hours here, I've gotten about 170 reports from viewers across multiple countries, multiple banks, multiple cities who said they're experiencing almost the exact same thing. And at first, I thought this is going to be a little five minute story, no big deal, a misunderstanding. You know, the banks say, "Okay, we're sorry.

[00:01:10]No problem. Let's move on."

[00:01:13]But the deeper I dug, the stranger it got. And this is what raises some questions. And I think every foreign card holder in Colombia should hear this. Even if you just visited, you should still hear this.

[00:01:26]So when the message came in, I didn't think much of it. Then another came and another and another and another. Before long, I was like 60 people sending me screenshots of their banking app showing weird transactions. And they were these were coming from Americans, uh, Canadians, Europeans, everything. It was weird, really weird, really different.

[00:01:45]But the one thing I did find is these were all accounts that were done out of US dollars. But they were different banks, different merchants, different cities, different transaction amounts, everything. They all felt kind of connected. And that's when my curiosity turned into concern because one of the things I've learned in my time here in Colombia is when a lot of unrelated people start describing the exact same experience, it's worth paying attention to. And not because it automatically means something's wrong or something bad happened, but because patterns actually matter.

[00:02:15]So, when the reports started coming in, they weren't really concentrated about one business. Like, this wasn't one restaurant. It wasn't a hotel. It wasn't the hookah situation all over again. And if you don't know that, ask down in the comments and we'll talk about it. But people were reporting transactions like grocery stores like Exito and Il Foro and Sport Wings and bars and just everyday retail purchases.

[00:02:42]What stood out wasn't where the transactions happened, it was who was affected. The common thread appears to be that it's foreign issued credit cards that charge in US dollars. And that's where things started getting really interesting because I checked my account and my I have two accounts. I have a I have an American bank account through Bank of America and I have a Panameanian bank account. And if you spent any amount of time traveling internationally, you've probably had a payment terminal ask you what most people answer without even giving a second thought. They say pesos or dollars. And we'll come back to that question back in a bit because I think it's more important than most travelers may have actually realized.

[00:03:19]But the thing that bothered me wasn't the charges themselves because like I said, mistakes happen. Banks make mistakes, processors make mistakes, software, even AI makes mistakes. A lot of them. The thing that bothered me was the timeline. Because most people believed a transaction follows a simple path. You buy something, your card gets charged, the transaction settles, life moves on. Most of us never think about it again. But what these reports challenged was that exact assumption.

[00:03:45]Because if transactions from January can suddenly become relevant again months later, the obvious question becomes how?

[00:03:54]And more importantly, why?

[00:03:57]So, as I kept digging, a communication from Kanco started circulating online and uh the guy Matt Remote Gringo, he put it up as well. So, thank you for putting that up. That helped a lot. And according to that communication, the issue involved certain dynamic currency conversion transactions or DCC conversions between January and May. And the company they stated that some customers were charged less than the actual amount authorized and that a correction process was later performed.

[00:04:29]Okay, so you made a mistake, right? They also said that merchants were not impacted and this was not a fraud event.

[00:04:36]So don't cancel your credit cards. It's not going to help. It's that's an important information. It's an important little nugget of information here because if we're going to ask tough if we're going to ask these tough questions. Sorry. We also have to present the explanation that's being offered. So maybe that's exactly what happened. Maybe this is legitimate correction process. I don't know. Maybe every amount was properly authorized.

[00:05:00]Maybe it's accurate. I don't know. This is all possible. But here's where I found myself asking even more questions.

[00:05:08]If that is what happened, why did this take 5 months to identify? And more importantly, why were consumers not notified beforehand? And how can how can card holders, how can we the people independently verify that the corrected amount matches the original authorization?

[00:05:26]And maybe the biggest question of all, how many people were affected in this?

[00:05:31]There's no transparency.

[00:05:34]So, let's go back to the payment terminal thing. Pesos or dollars? If you're like most travelers, you probably just answered that question without thinking two seconds. You may have heard people say that you always should choose pesos. You've heard the opposite.

[00:05:46]Probably you have no idea what the what it really meant. The reality is that choice is tied to something called dynamic currency conversion. And for years, travelers have generally been advised to go to local currency. In Colombia, that means pesos. The reason simple. When you choose pesos, your card network typically handles the conversion. And they're going to give you a better rate than Crab Banko is. Maybe as much as a 10% difference. Credit Bankco is not they're not your friends. They are they are there to line their pockets. They don't give a damn about you. And when you choose dollars, the conversion may happen differently. For some travelers, for most, it seems insignificant until something unusual happens like this. And that's why this question was super important because if foreign card holders are the common denominator, understanding these transactions or how they're processed, especially like foundationally important. So, one of the things that I've noticed while speaking to viewers that the story isn't really about money. It's not even it the amounts are minimal. The amounts are less than a dollar in a lot of cases.

[00:06:53]But for many people, the amounts involved were pretty small. I mean, I had one person gave me show me one that was $170 and it went up about four bucks. But here's the problem is the reason people are paying attention is trust. People generally don't want to use their US credit cards here. And this might be the best ever advertisement for ARQ, which I'll put the link down below and at the end I'll talk about that really quickly.

[00:07:23]But people, they thought these transactions were finished. They're done. closed, resolved, done, idiot.

[00:07:28]Yeah. Bing. Then months later, they desri they're finding out that's not necessarily the case and creates uncertainty. And uncertainty makes people uncomfortable, especially when it involves a foreign bank charging them and touching their money. And not because you're looking for someone to blame because they but because they want to understand the rules. They want to know how the system works. And if we're being honest, most of us don't really know about as as much about payment processing as we actually think we do.

[00:07:57]So after all of this, I reached out to both major processors involved and so far that's been bankco and reban. They're the two major ones. There's also bold, but I haven't gotten a single complaint from a bold terminal. So that may be a smoking gun with that. But I reached out to both of them involved and I wanted answers. I didn't want to accuse them. I wanted answers. So, when I presented the letter that Matt showed, I presented them with all that information and I asked for further explanation because I said there's a lot of people that are concerned and there's a lot of people that want to know what's happening to their money. The answer that I got back was no comment.

[00:08:41]So, now let's be fair. A company declining comment doesn't prove wrong wrongdoing.

[00:08:48]Not even close. But it does mean that many of the questions that consumers are asking and I'm asking for them are unanswered even by them. And that's why we're talking about this today.

[00:08:58]So let's get down to brass tax. What should you do if you're a foreign card holder and you used your foreign credit card and it charges in US dollars, you use it here in Colombia over the last 6 months from the beginning of this year on or you're planning a trip here.

[00:09:13]Here's what I recommend. The first thing is I'm going to say you may want to get an ARQ bank account. It's it's kind of like Cash App, but it uses USDC and USDT. And it is considered a Colombian credit card. So when you use it, it's not processing the money. They're doing the processing and they're doing it based on USDT, USDC. So that's going to avoid all of these issues. That's you don't have to worry about the DCC. your bank, a company that is looking out for your interest more than the than especially more than these guys. They're going to run that transaction for you.

[00:09:50]So, I'm going to put a link down below.

[00:09:53]Use use that link, put your email in, uh fund your account, and you can either do it with a or you can do it with uh USDT USDC direct transfer. And once you spend a hundred bucks, you're going to get $20 back. And we're going to get a little bit to keep these fun lights on. and food in the doggy's tummy.

[00:10:13]So, if you could do that, that would be great. If you don't want to do that, completely dig it. Use cash everywhere that you go. Use cash here. And don't carry a lot of cash on the streets with you. Carry less than 200,000 pesos with you, unless you have something specific you're going to buy. You have to be smart with things here. So, unfortunately, using your US your US credit card here, it's not really going to do it anymore. that this is this is going to this is now proving to you that be careful with your money when you go when you go anywhere in the world. I don't think it's just here. It may not even be just here. I've heard people say it's in India happening as well, but I don't know. So, my advice, if you are going to use your card here, keep your statements and keep looking at them. If you notice something unusual, contact your bank and ask for, this is important, ask for a written explanation. Document everything and most importantly don't assume. Don't assume this is fraud. Don't assume it's incompetence and don't assume that the explanation is wrong because it might not be. Collect facts. Facts. Remember this is very important. Do as much research as you can. Don't do me search.

[00:11:23]Do research. Very important difference.

[00:11:26]I have to remind myself of that. It's on my board over here. So, but ask questions and compare information with other people because that's how we get closer to the truth. Because I will tell you this, I do not believe that either of these banks is fully telling the truth. I don't believe it for a second.

[00:11:42]I can't prove it. So, I'm not going to say it, but I don't believe it.

[00:11:46]Something I want to be very clear about with this video, I'm not I'm not making this video to tell you what happened.

[00:11:52]And I'm not making it even now. I'm just making it because this is a very important moment. This is something that affects your finances and the questions that I think that there are questions that still deserve to be answered by these companies and I don't think they've done it yet. Maybe this turns out to be a completely legitimate correction process. Maybe it doesn't.

[00:12:13]But either way, if ordinary retail transactions can suddenly jump back onto your statement months later, foreign card holders deserve to know exactly how and why that can happen. until these questions get answered. I'm just gonna keep digging and I do want to say this that I though I don't believe this is what's going on. I have I have my own beliefs here and I'm not going to say anything because those companies are very ligious. So I'm going to keep my mouth shut as what I think it is. I let you decide what you think it is and please tell us down in the comments.

[00:12:44]Let's talk about it there. But I do want to say that as any information comes up, I'm going to put this out there. But please, if you please check check your check your accounts right now. Jump in and just see. You'll see over the past 24 hours if this has happened to you.

[00:13:01]You're going to see it from like a transaction that you made back in the day. I made a trans my here's an example. I made a transaction at uh Daria Almana and it was for $1148, but this was back in February. When I looked back, that was what I got charged. I went back into my receipts because I keep my receipts. I'm a psychopath like that. I went back and looked and that was how much it got charged. This was the amount in pesos and I did the exact check with my bank and they credited me that amount and they charged me $118 more. So, this could be a this could be something small or it could be something large. I don't know. This is what I recommend to all of you. Call your bank.

[00:13:48]And like I said, get everything in writing. If you want more explanation, put some pressure on Reban and Credib Banko. Find out who these people that you did the transaction with. Find out who processes their transactions and get in touch with them because I'm telling you this right now. Don't go to their offices. They have offices here, but those people in the offices aren't going to be able to tell you anything.

[00:14:11]Also, don't go to the if you're here, don't go to the place where the transaction happened. They have no idea what happened. They have no clue. And most of these people have not seen an adjustment. So, this means that they're not getting the money. They haven't gotten the money this to this point.

[00:14:28]Thus far, they haven't gotten the money.

[00:14:30]So, we don't know what this means.

[00:14:33]I would recommend reaching out to those two pe those two companies. uh my where I had the best results from getting questions from them was on Twitter X whatever you want to call it exwitter Twitter go there and reach out to both and they do have people that speak English so I want you to go to both of them find out where the transactions were processed you may have to contact the retailer to find that out but go and find out which company processed that transaction and go talk to them because they need to they need to answer to They need to have answers for it and they need to rem they need to let people know before they just start playing with money in their bank account because you're not skimming money. You can't skim money legally no matter what people no matter what they hide behind. If this is a money skimming thing, it's dirty and this is mafia stuff. But if it's not and if it's just a real mistake, then that's what it is. But please do some research on this. Find out more information and let me know in the comments if you were affected what the difference was because all that I'm seeing is that this all of these transactions being processed, 90% of them favor the bank. They favor them and they don't favor you in the in the exchange. So, let's talk about this.

[00:15:49]Let's get some information and let's all take a deep breath and let's look into what's going on for real here. Thank you guys. I'm not going to ask you to like, share, subscribe, all that, but please share this. Please share the video and get this out there so more people know what's going on. All right. Thank you and have a fantastic weekend. Go vote if you're Colombian.