Hands off my holiday money banks, I’m using a currency card
Summary: Don’t give away part of your holiday spending money to your bank. You could be losing around 5% in card charges made by your bank on overseas transactions and withdrawals made with your current account debit card. With a CaxtonFX Euro currency card you load the card (a Mastercard prepaid debit card) in Euro, at a very competitive rate of exchange. Then you pay no fees or charges for purchases or cash withdrawals made in Euro and no card purchase fee or monthly fees.
by viZZZual.com
Introduction: UK residents are already being hit in the pocket by the low value of the British pound to the Euro. Therefore you need to make sure that you’re not losing even more of the value of your holiday pound by shelling out for fees and charges on debit card fees and charges for Euro transactions.
When doing research on Mastercard prepaid debit cards, the only payment method to avoid the Ryanair £5 per person per flight, I noticed that CaxtonFX, the supplier of one my recommended cards, the CaxtonFX Global Traveller Card, also offered the option of a Euro currency card.
Typical bank charges for overseas usage: Halifax Reward current account holders pay a fee of 2.75% plus a flat £1.50 fee for any foreign transactions or machine cash withdrawals. Therefore if you spent say the Euro equivalent of £1000 in fifteen separate transactions, say ten card payments of £75 and five Euro cash withdrawals of £50 using your debit card, you’d pay £27.50 (2.75% x £100) and £22.50 (15 x £1.50), a total of £50 in fees and charges, that’s 5% of your spend of £1000 holiday spending money.
Nat West customers face a 2.75% flat fee for purchases and cash withdrawals with an additional £1.25 flat fee for purchases and a 2% fee for cash withdrawals,with a minimum charge of £2 and a maximum of £5. Therefore on 10 purchases totalling £750 the cost would be £20.63 (2.75% of £750) plus £12.50 (5 x£1.25) total of £33.13.The cost for the cash withdrawals would be £6.87 (2.75% of £250 plus £10 (5 x £2 minimum fee), a total of £16.87 . That adds up to a grand total of £50, again 5% of your holiday spending money.
Advantages of the CaxtonFX Euro Card:
1 You save around 5% on the charges and fees made by many banks on overseas transactions and cash withdrawals.
2 There are no fees or charges made for this card, some other currency cards charge an application fee, loading fee, transaction and/or a cash withdrawal charge.
3 You can set and keep to your holiday spending limit.
4 You get a better rate of exchange to load your CaxtonFX Euro card than you would buying Euro at a UK bureau de change. You could just make a fee free cash withdrawal on arrival at your destination, although it’s always wise to have some local currency in your possession when you first arrive.
Disadvantages of the CaxtonFX Euro Card:
1 It’s simpler and more convenient just to use the debit card from your current account as opposed to applying for and loading a currency card.
2 There’s a minimum load of 150 Euro to your card. If you don’t spend all you holiday budget the balance will remain on your card. However the card is valid for 2 years, so as long as you are pretty sure that you’ll visit a country in the Euro Zone during this period you can spend the remaining funds then. The balance won’t receive any interest and the exchange rate is locked in,which could be a good or bad thing, depending on the future value of the UK Pound. If you don’t want to leave the balance on you card there are two ways to get a refund. You can make a machine cash withdrawal in the UK of the remaning balance but that would cost £1.50 plus a 2.5% fee. the other alternative is to apply for a refund to Caxton which can take 30 days with a 2 Euro flat fee, valued at the prevailing buy rate.
3 Although there’s no card purchase fee, there is a £10 deposit payable on application for your card which is credited to your balance the first time that you load your card.
Conclusion: If you are travelling to a country which uses the Euro as its currency, it well worth looking at purchasing a CaxtonFX Euro currency card. It’ll mean that you get more from the your holiday spending money as your bank will not be taking around 5% in fees and charges. You’ll have the reassurance of knowing that when you pay for a purchase of 75 Euro, you will only pay 75 euro debited from your currency card and that you won’t overspend when you’re in carefree holiday mode. This currency card is probably best suited to either frequent travellers and/or high spenders to countries in the Euro Zone, who’ll be able to recoup more in savings to balance the time spent applying for and maintaining the currency card.
Warning and Disclosure: Please read the terms and conditions carefully before purchasing a currency card. This post is based on my research but I’m by no means a financial expert. If you purchase a CaxtonFX card, I’ll be paid a commission. However in my opinion this currency card is a good buy for many UK residents travelling to the Euro Zone.
