American and Canadian ATM cards are frozen in Brazil

Hi Enexad,

It depends on which bank you deal with in your home country. For example if you deal with Citibank or HSBC which both operate here in Brazil then you can withdraw money from any ATM in their banks and most of their network machines.

If you deal with ANY other bank in either Canada or the USA the only way to make international ATM withdrawals is at the major (usually main) branches of Banco do Brasil and then the ATM must display the network symbol for your card (Cirrus, etc). You will also be limited to a R$800 withdrawl on weekdays and a single withdrawl in that amount on the weekend, so if you withdraw Saturday you won't be able to withdraw again until Monday.

The people at Tecban (Banco24horas) have nothing at all to do with this, they never have. I've been here in Brazil eleven years and it has always been this way.

You can use your credit card for purchases here, however your debit card will not work here.

Hope that helps you out.

Cheers,
William James Woodward - Brazil Animator, Expat-blog Team

I've been here for 4 years, and my foreign cards (debit or credit) all work fine, but I'm from Belgium, maybe that's the difference.  I'm generally not happy with how the banks operate here in Brazil, but that's another story. the other day, HSBC closed my two business accounts simply because they don't want to have clients that are involved in the tourism business... at least that is what they told me. I am forced to change my line of business to have a bank account. Only in Brazil.