[spoondan]

Hmm. That’s neat. But usually someone has a bank card or other membership card with a support line on it. Is there some reason to not just call one to report the found wallet?

The times I’ve found a wallet, I’ve called one of those support lines. The support person was able to contact their customer to give them my phone number. The customer called/texted me, and we arranged for them to pickup the wallet. This has worked every time to get the wallet back to its owner within a couple hours of my finding it with minimal inconvenience to me.

[royce]

It depends on the organization. Some larger financial institutions are sometimes more likely - or even bound by internal policy - to simply trigger their standard card-cancellation procedures.

Instead, one could present the financial institution with the hypothetical question, and then only give the specifics if the institution's policies are non-destructive.

If the finder is a decent sort, and has the time to try alternatives, I'd rather get the cards back intact than to have to do the cancellation dance.