Short answer: the card is almost certainly not coming back, so do not spend the holiday trying to get it back. Block it immediately from India, switch your parents to their backup payment method, and order a replacement to the home address. The ATM visit that eats a card is a ten-minute problem; it becomes a five-day problem only when families skip the backup planning.
Why ATMs keep cards. Machines swallow cards for mundane reasons: too many wrong PIN attempts, the card not pulled out quickly enough, a network hiccup mid-transaction, or the bank flagging something. None of these means fraud, and none of them can be argued with at the machine - there is no slot to negotiate with, and no emergency release a passer-by can help with.
What your parent does at the machine - three small things. First, wait a minute or two: some ATMs return a held card after a timeout. Second, note exactly which machine it is - the bank's name, the branch or address, the time - and photograph the ATM if possible. Third, if the ATM is attached to a bank branch and the branch is open, walk in and ask; some branches will retrieve a card for a passport-carrying owner, though many will not, and foreign cards are often destroyed under local security rules rather than returned. Then step aside and call home.
What you do from India - the important half. Block the card immediately: through the bank's mobile app or net banking if you have the credentials, or by calling the bank's 24x7 helpline (the number lives on the bank's website and should also be written in your parents' travel papers). Do not wait to see whether the card resurfaces - a retained card that is later fished out of a machine by the wrong hands is a worse story than a blocked one. Once blocked, ask the bank to issue a replacement to the registered home address in India; banks do not courier replacement debit cards to hotels abroad.
The rest of the trip runs on the backup. This is why the pre-trip rule exists: every traveller carries two independent ways to pay, kept in two different places - a second debit or credit card packed separately from the main wallet, a forex card, and some cash in the destination currency. If the swallowed card was the only card, the family escalates: you can reload a forex card online from India, arrange a money transfer for cash pickup, or have a companion's card carry shared expenses until home.
When you are back, two cleanups. Check the account statement for any transaction after the swallow time and dispute anything unfamiliar with the bank in writing. And confirm the replacement card's international usage is switched on before the next trip - replacement cards sometimes arrive with international transactions disabled by default.
Prevention is boring and effective. Use ATMs attached to bank branches during opening hours rather than lonely street machines at night. Take the card out the moment the machine offers it - hesitation is the classic cause. And keep the issuer's helpline number on paper, because the day the card goes into the machine is the day the phone's battery also dies.
How we build for it at TripKeeper. Every parent trip we plan carries two separated payment methods per traveller plus the card-blocking numbers on the printed emergency card, so a swallowed card is an errand, not a crisis. Send us a trip-planning inquiry if you want that built into your parents' next itinerary.
A Miranda House graduate and lawyer who traded courtrooms for slow travel. Cheshta travels with the batches we host ourselves, with a soft spot for travelling alongside elders.
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