Hi I am going to Europe for 4 weeks in a few months time for the first time. I would like to get some advice on how to carry currency around in Europe, we planning to go to Italy, and Austria. I will carry small amount of cash, most will be in the card, but which card is the best: debit card, credit card or travel money card. is there any other way to carry currency? Is it better to change to Euro in Australia or carry AUD to Europe to change to Euro? If I carry AUD, where is the best place to change to Euro in Italy where I will spend most of the time. Is the bank the best place to do the exchange? Is so, which bank is the best to do exchange?
How you overcome language barriers in Italy? Thanks
How to Carry Currency When Travelling Overseas, Especially Europe and US
jowu15 on 02/04/2019 - 11:19
Comments
thanks for your reply
have a read of the Ozbargain wiki page - Cards with No Overseas Transaction Fees.
get your currency when you arrive from an ATM
The "Revolut" card is extremely popular in Europe at the moment - https://www.revolut.com/en-AU/
Works very well too and has no ATM fees and no exchange fees for selected currencies.
You get instantaneous notifications on their mobile app when a transaction is made and the cost in both your own currency as well as the foreign one.
The app also keeps track of the categories of purchases (ie. food, amenities, travel etc) so you know where all your money disappeared to when on holiday!
Revolut is not available to Australians yet…
Have you opened https://www.revolut.com/en-AU/ recently?
EDIT: Ahh, you're right.
Tried inputting my phone number to see what would happen - no deal.
They appear to have the AU part of the site done but it's not activated yet.I think they're running quite a bit behind schedule on their US and AU side of things.
Thanks for the info on "Revolut", I love it and cannot wait for it to be available in Australia
I've just downloaded the app and went through the registration process there with my phone number and email address etc and it looks like it's processed (although, I'm number 21,000 in the queue for processing!).
So, maybe their website is just not setup properly yet.
From what I've noticed, everything is done via the app and there is no website to access your something like "online banking", so maybe the website is lagging behind a bit with updates for Oz.
Citibank Plus debit and 28 Deg credit card. I was in Europe a few months ago, it was pretty much give and take when it came to finding banks with no ATM fees but I just kept trying until I found one :) Didnt venture to Austria and Italy though.
Download the Google Translate and Microsoft translate apps, and all the language packs for the countries you are going to (if you are not having a sim/wifi but best do it anyway), very handy for us and we could manage with it.
Thanks for your post. I think I will buy a locate sim with lots of data to use to get around. How long you were there for and did you get a locate sim?
I bought a 3 travel sim from one of the Ozbargain posts, Eurosim. $35 for 12GB for 30 days because I started off my trip in France and when I looked up local sims it was very expensive. Depends what country you land in but I didnt want to struggle with language barriers for the T&C's since some sims have different restrictions for EU Roaming
thanks for the info and I had a look of Eurosim website and its good, like you said save the trouble of hunt for a new sim in a foreign country, only thing is there is no more discount
Don't carry too much cash around, a lot of tourists still do that and make easy targets for pickpockets. Just have a little bit and you can get it out and spend it without being too worried abut security.
But then you have an atm card and just worry about keeping that safely with your passport. Best to tuck it into your underwear. The more tucked the better. Get way in there
How can you possibly tuck passport, currency in underwear!
feral
Use your imagination!
In Europe, avoid carrying cash or valuable, specially in France, Spain and the Netherlands. Pickpocketer are everywhere.
Ubank.. Great exchange rates and no atm fees on our recent us trip.
In your socks..
You'd probably get better rates in Australia but doesn't hurt to bring extra AUD with you. As for the language barrier, know the basic phrases or even just words. If you can't memorise, Google Translate has always been helpful to me in the past.
Citibank Plus & ING debit card are both solid (ING slightly better but more hoops to jump through).
CC, both 28 degrees and Bankwest have FX fee free options.
Avoid travel card money, those have bad rates, high fees etc
I would exchange a couple of hundred AUD to Euro just in case and then use whatever fee free ATMs there are in Europe with my debit cards and try to pay everything else on CC where possible. You generally want to exchange currency locally than overseas that way you have the cash on hand immediately when you land, the last thing you wanna do is muck around in an unfamiliar place trying to find a currency exchange place.