I would chime in my 2 cents on the worry about fraudulent usages on stolen cards.

Based on 2 incidents that our Fido / Schwab debit cards were lost together with other credit cards when being pickpocketed in Italy on 2 different trips, I have concluded that the thieves were only interested in the cash in the wallet and not any of the cards.

There was not a penny of charge attempt on ANY of the cards in the wallets that got stolen. When it happened the first time, like all Americans we were alarmed and immediately tried to reach all the card issuers to report the theft. Well, it was on a weekend and Chase could not put a stop on its cards because the system was under weekend maintenance due early morning the following Monday. All the rep could do was to send a email to the fraud dept about the theft. (And we found out on Monday the email was never acted on. Duh!) NOTHING scary ever happened, on all the debit cards and credit cards.

When same thing happened the following year at a different part in Italy I did not even bother to call the banks and just sent emails to alert the banks of stolen cards when we got to our hotel several hours after we discovered the theft which probably happened also hours before we discovered it. We suspected it was stolen at a McDonald by the train station at Padova. We discovered the theft when we were on the train to Milan after already connected to another train en route. Again, NOTHING scary ever happened.

Friend has similar experience when his wallet is stolen in Paris metro. Nothing happened to his cards.

This is not to say that no fraudulent charges would happen when cards were stolen. But I am convinced that the petty thieves in Europe do not bother to scam your cards. All they care for are the cash found in the wallet.

Besides, one can turn off the linkage (overdraft feature) between the Cash Management account and the brokerage account. As long as the feature is turned off, the Cash Manage debit card can only access the balance in the Cash Management account. Nothing in your brokerage account would ever be touched.

While a $10K purchase power seems high on a debit card, who with a brain would ever put $10K idle cash in a Fido Cash Management account when the account is solely used for access cash when outside US?!

For goodness sake, the transaction above the account balance would be declined, so why worry, and why send 30 min to try to get the limit to change when it essentially is just a theoretical number that does not necessarily mean one can buy $10K of merchandise when the account only has $1K balance?

People need to understand the difference between a credit card and a debit card. A debit card's purchasing power is just as big as the account balance, UP TO the $10K daily limit. As simple as that.

The much bigger pain / annoyance when losing the debit / credit cards is the inconvenience in paying the ongoing travel expenses. For that reason alone we always travel with 2 debit cards and multiple credit cards, both Visa and MC, plus AMEX occasionally.

The beauty of the Fido / Schwab debit cards are, they are of different account numbers between the primary card and the secondary card so if each person carries his own cards, one person being pickpocketed does not affect the other person's cards. Some credit cards also have different card numbers so when a card is lost the account can stay working. When both primary and secondary cards are of same number, such as the Chase / Citi / BofA credit cards, the account is shut down even only one card is lost.