Hey all first post hopefully you guys can point me in the right direction. im heading to europe for a 5 week holiday in 2 months time. ive been wondering the best way to use my money and a friend of mine explained about the travel card banks and finacial institutions use. Has anyone had any experience with travel cards before? do they just work like debit cards?
if anyone could point me in the right direction it would be really appreciated.
Thanks for your time
Travel Card for Overseas Holiday
Lmag1c88 on 09/06/2015 - 10:44
Comments
cheers man your a legend!
I can praise the citibank card too, I recently used it in Bali and worked like a charm, no $5 fee to withdraw or transaction fee for purchases
I am a little bit of a newbie to how the banks charge. If i purchase something overseas and all my money in my account is AUD, will the citibank exchange rate on the day take place? In other words, would it be a good decision to hold some cash in case the AUD depreciates?
Thank you for the previous info mate!You are right, the money in your Citibank account is AUD. When you make a purchase, the rate is determined using VISA's exchange rate found on this website: http://usa.visa.com/personal/card-benefits/travel/exchange-r…
This rate is always better than a standard bank's, but you won't know the rate you received until the next day.
In the second part of the question you're referring to hedging against the dollar movements. Unless we are talking a substantial amount of money and you are certain that the AUD will depreciate (impossible to predict or you'd be a rich forex trader my friend), I wouldn't worry about holding cash in advance. But if you want to gamble it could pay off marginally, who knows?
This is a great resource for using the Citibank plus account: http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/citibank_plus_transaction_accou…
Sounds great, thanks a lot for the advice mate. Really helped myself and friends out. I think I will the citibank account up and just take a bit of cash incase of emergencies.
With the VISA links, should i put 0.0% bank fee as Citibank Plus Account advertise "Pay $0 Citibank fees for any overseas ATM or in-store transactions1."
Or am i reading wrongly?
Thanks guys!
28 Degrees mastercard
I heard that changed and was now no longer as good? Not sure about the details though…
Just be prepared to signup for your citibank account well in advance as customer service is pretty shit at times.
i just popped into the travel agent and they told me about mastercard cash passport, seems good to me. can you guys pick any faults in it?
https://www.cashpassport.com.auhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xymrr34oVY (ABC's Checkout)
Watch out for Hotel pre-authorizations (long times for them being removed with some cards)
There are whole host of faults with Mastercard Cash Passport. $5 reload fee, $4/month inactivity fee, 2.95% fee if used in an Australian ATM, $10 fee to cash out your remaining balance, 5.95% fee if you make a purchase or withdrawal in a currency not loaded on the card.
In addition, the exchange rate you get when loading money on the card is abysmal. At the time of posting, Cash Passport is offering a Euro rate of 1 EUR=1.5579 AUD, compared to the mid-market rate (from xe.com) of 1 EUR=1.4532 AUD.
This equates to a currency conversion fee of 7.2%.
Seriously, go with Citibank Plus. I've used it extensively in Europe without any issues, getting a rate within 1% of the mid-market rate.
Has anyone recently signed up for the citibank account? I ask because it asked for license and passport numbers in an online verification process that may take 2 days. Does this mean it's no longer necessary to go to aus post if using that method?
I applied for a Citibank Plus two months ago and did online verification. I didn't need to visit the post office.
How long did the total process take from first applying to being ready to use?
Would have been 10-12 days… normally.
Unfortunately with my application Citibank sent the paperwork, debit card and pin to the wrong address (a totally random address that I'd never heard of) so they had to cancel the original card etc and then reissue me with new ones. For me it took nearly 6 weeks before I could withdraw cash from my account using the debit card.
Use this: http://www.citibank.com.au/aus/banking/everyday_banking/citi…
It is not a travel card, but rather a debit card with no additional charge for overseas purchases (usually 3%) and free ATM withdrawals in Europe at most ATMs. This is the card that always comes up in these types of threads. Another one to consider is the 28 Degrees mastercard.
The banks will rip you off with their travel cards. Do some research into the citibank one so you are confident with how to use it before you go!