How to Activate Your Santander Credit Card
Santander Bank, N.A. provides comprehensive financial services to customers in the United Kingdom and the United States. It began as a savings and loan in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, but Now the brand is based in Boston and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Santander Group in Spain.
The bank currently operates about 650 retail offices and 2,000 ATMs. Customers have nearly $60 billion in deposits with this financial institution.
If you hold an account with Santander, then knowing how to activate your credit card makes it easier to manage your finances.
The activation steps to follow depend on your current location.
Activating Your Santander UK Credit Card
You can activate your Santander UK credit card by logging into your online banking portal.
Once you have your dashboard available, you can click on the My Details and Settings tab. This step provides another series of selections. Choose “Other Services.”
Then Santander will ask if you are activating your debit or credit card services. You must select the “Credit” option to complete the activation process.
A one-time passcode will go to your registered mobile phone to verify your identity. Once you input this number in its appropriate place online, your new credit card will be available for use immediately.
If you don’t have or want to use online banking, then you can activate your Santander UK credit card by dialing 0800 9 123 123 to have a customer care representative help with the activation process.
Activating Your Santander USA Credit Card
Santander suspended the issuance of new credit cards for American customers in 2019. Issues with charging some people too much interest caused the need to stop this portion of their business.
If you received a card from Santander in the mail to activate, then you have a debit Mastercard® that links to your checking account.
Most new debit cards arrive between 5-7 business days after you open a checking account with Santander. It should come with your unique PIN.
Santander sends your debit card separately from your PIN for added security. Each arrives in an unmarked envelope, so you’ll want to watch for these to ensure they don’t get thrown away with the junk mail.
You can go to any ATM with Santander branding to activate your debit card using the provided personal identification number. Once the activation process is complete, then you can change the PIN to something you prefer.
Although an online activation is not possible with a Santander debit card, you can download the bank’s mobile app to complete this process. You must provide identity verification information to link the app to your new account.
Then you can change the PIN through the mobile app if you prefer. The Santander app works with touch and face identification technologies from Apple and biometrics from Android to maintain security.
You can also call the customer contact center from 6 am to 10 pm at (877) 726-0631 to activate your new debit card. If hearing impairments cause phone calls to be a challenging experience, then the TTY/TDD line at (800) 428-9121 can complete the activation process.