If you think you lost it outside…
The most immediate thing you should do is retrace your steps if you’ve been outside. Once, the morning of the flight for my move overseas, after I had been cleaning the last bits of the apartment out, I realized my wallet was missing. Talk about the worst time for that to happen!
I ran back out of my apartment, like a mad dog, looking at the ground the whole time. As I went out the back door, I found it the exact moment a lady was picking it up.
If nothing turns up, you will need to hope either a moral person finds it and chooses to return it to you or the police. If you use social media and have them private, try to make your profiles public for a little bit in case the finder tries to message you on Facebook or elsewhere.
Try following up with your local police department on their non emergency phone line (which you can Google) every week for a couple of weeks.
If you lose your wallet in an Uber, Bus, Plane, Taxi…
Although I’ve never lost a wallet in one, Uber’s support service will contact your driver on your behalf if you report something as missing. If you take a Taxi, especially on vacation where you have many other things of value with you, it’s prudent to take a photo of the driver’s certificate if available, then you can bring that to the police in the event of loss.
I’ve lost my wallet on buses twice. The first time, I was a little kid and it had a crisp $100 bill in it. It was a rare gift, all of my birthday money. And I lost it, never to be found.
The second time, when I was older, I called the bus company. It turned out they had it. I had to drive over to where the buses get washed and maintained and pick it up. The little lady at the window even gave me advice, she suggested I wrap my wallet in a rubber band so it doesn’t fall out of my pocket (by way of extra friction.) I never followed that advice because it’d be too much of a hassle, but I did since invent Pocktail which has stopped me from losing wallets ever since.
If you lost it at a venue…
If you were in a specific place, you need to contact them to see if they have it.
If you were in a restaurant, go back and check near your table. Everywhere. I’ve lost a phone in the couch cushions of a place I ate at, and it was so well hidden, I only managed to find it because of the Find My iPhone feature.
What to do if you got pickpocketed…
It’s not always the case that you lost your wallet. It’s possible it was taken from you. One time, as I was leaving a nightclub, I noticed my wallet was missing. I informed the bouncers, and as it was closing time, they said the staff would look for it, but it didn’t turn up. There were other people who had lost things as well waiting with me.
As I was in bed that night, notifications started coming up on my phone about charges to my card. Needless to say, I and presumably the other people had been pickpocketed that night. You need to call your banks and cancel any cards that were in your wallet.
Will you get refunded for charges the thieves made?
Yes, as long as you contact the bank soon afterwards, they will sort things out. It’s technically the merchants fault for accepting the card, as they are supposed to verify it’s really yours by looking at the name, signature, and asking for ID.