Great question @Kabe.
The last known location of your phone is just one of the signals that we use to detect fraud so please don’t worry about us blocking your card if you don’t have data access. In the absence of data access we can also be a little bit more intelligent about how we use your phone’s last known location. Obviously, if we can tell that your phone was last seen in London 2 minutes ago and we see your card is being used in a bar in Ibiza then there’s a high probability that something is awry. Conversely if we last saw your phone 10 hours ago near Heathrow airport and now we see a transaction in Ibiza then perhaps you’re on holiday. That’s just a simple example but hopefully it illustrates the point.
Of course we’ll be improving this all the time so hopefully the days of your cards being blocked when you go on holiday will be a thing of the past.