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TransferWise card for holiday spending - good experience

Holiday Ideas & Foreign Travel
DiamondEcho
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TransferWise card for holiday spending - good experience

#255382

Postby DiamondEcho » October 2nd, 2019, 12:47 pm

I recently spent a week in Iceland on holiday. Having been scalped previously by the major banks on foreign spending I set up an account with a debit card at TransferWise. I used it for 19 transactions spending the £ equivalent of £432, upon which the total costs were about £2.50 vs the commercial (ie not the tourist) FX rate for the Icelandic Krone recorded by my go-to FX site xe.com across that period.

I'd be interested to hear any other experiences.

TedSwippet
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Re: TransferWise card for holiday spending - good experience

#255389

Postby TedSwippet » October 2nd, 2019, 1:27 pm

Positive experiences. I used my card in the Caribbean to obtain EC$ (which then proceeded to confuse ever person I paid with them, because they universally expected USD from the obvious tourist!), and most recently in the Czech Republic. In both cases I got only a shade under mid-market rate, and solidly better than any alternative forex I've used so far.

A couple of things to be aware of, though. Firstly, if you withdraw more than £200 equivalent in cash inside a rolling 30 day period, you pay a 2% charge on amounts above. Generally not a problem if you are somewhere where you can pay by card in supermarkets, attractions and so on, but can catch you if you visit a country where cash is predominant (or if you withdraw a sizeable unused balance from a UK ATM on return).

And secondly, watch closely for local ATM fees on cash withdrawals. The ATM should inform you before you proceed. Some fees can be reasonable, but some are egregious. For example, the first one I tried wanted to charge 200 CZK -- that's close to £7 -- on a £50 equivalent withdrawal. And that was in a well out-of-town shopping centre, not at the airport. Outrageous; no way. The Raffeisen ATM next to it charged me nothing, so excellent.

The other thing, of course, is to have a backup. My wife's Halifax Clarity card is an excellent alternative. We also take a few days of spending in cash just in case.

stevensfo
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Re: TransferWise card for holiday spending - good experience

#255399

Postby stevensfo » October 2nd, 2019, 2:07 pm

I sometimes use Revolut which I believe uses the same system and I calculated the exchange rate to be 3.5% better than a normal bank card. Both Revolut and Transferwise seem to be well known all over the world, especially by teachers abroad, since setting up a new currency account is easy.

Good advice about limits of cash withdrawals and ATMs. I was badly hit by an ATM in Malta, but I was in a hurry. Ridiculous charges!

Steve

jaizan
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Re: TransferWise card for holiday spending - good experience

#261556

Postby jaizan » November 1st, 2019, 8:19 pm

TedSwippet wrote:A couple of things to be aware of, though. Firstly, if you withdraw more than £200 equivalent in cash inside a rolling 30 day period, you pay a 2% charge on amounts above.

An alternative is to spend 10 minutes opening a Starling account with no £200 cap.

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Re: TransferWise card for holiday spending - good experience

#261956

Postby DiviLuvva » November 4th, 2019, 8:13 am

We're presently in Tenerife and most of our spending is done using my TransferWise card, with the account preloaded in EUR. As soon as we arrived I withdrew 200 EUR at an ATM; got charged more than that obviously. I find the app on my phone and tablet really useful: the spend appears immediately!

I have a Starling account which I'll use for any further cash withdrawals if required. Ditto about the Starling app.

CaitrionasDad
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Re: TransferWise card for holiday spending - good experience

#262036

Postby CaitrionasDad » November 4th, 2019, 3:16 pm

I tend to use a Nationwide card to withdraw largish cash sums from ATMs - to avoid the £200 monthly restriction on transferWise.

Where TrasnferWise is good is not paying for individual Visa/Mastercard transactions and the ability to pre-load currency - so you can load foreign currency when the rate is 'good'

Also good way to pay and holding/damage deposits for apartments and to reduce the costs for receive the repayment

stevensfo
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Re: TransferWise card for holiday spending - good experience

#262448

Postby stevensfo » November 5th, 2019, 10:32 pm

CaitrionasDad wrote:I tend to use a Nationwide card to withdraw largish cash sums from ATMs - to avoid the £200 monthly restriction on transferWise.

Also good way to pay and holding/damage deposits for apartments and to reduce the costs for receive the repayment


Likewise for renting cars. I use Revolut, but it's the same. I keep an eye on the amount loaded on the card and control it so it's just enough for my needs, euros and pounds mainly.

One thing I'm not sure about is, if I make a mistake and there are not enough euros to pay for something, e.g. rental agency charging for filling the tank after I've returned the car, will the rest automatically come from the pounds loaded on the card?

Steve

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Re: TransferWise card for holiday spending - good experience

#262533

Postby CaitrionasDad » November 6th, 2019, 10:51 am

stevensfo wrote:
One thing I'm not sure about is, if I make a mistake and there are not enough euros to pay for something, e.g. rental agency charging for filling the tank after I've returned the car, will the rest automatically come from the pounds loaded on the card?

Steve


Transferwise claim to move balance from the cheapest currency in your account, so if you have money loaded in other currencies these are used if you run out of the local currency

From their website:
Leave the conversion to us

If you spend money in a currency you already have in your balances, we’ll deduct the amount for free.

If you don’t have the currency in your account, we’ll automatically convert the amount for you. We’ll take it from whichever available balance has the cheapest conversion fee. So there’s no need to worry about converting money before travelling.


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