Hi everyone
Was wondering what is the better card to use overseas (mainly Europe) for PayPass / general card payments? They both don’t have international transaction fees. Would they generally be the same?
Thanks
ANZ Rewards Adventures Card vs 28 Degrees
Westpac on 04/12/2019 - 12:06
Related Stores
Comments
I have both. No international transaction fees but you have to be mindful of the currency conversion. If you can justify the annual fee the ANZ is a no brainer, especially with the free flight and introductory points. 28 Degrees though is perfectly fine if you just want a travel card without the bells and whistles and fee free. Can’t go wrong either way :)
This is disregarding the annual fee as I have both. But which one is better in terms of currency conversion?
Did you get a response or idea on the conversion rate? See my posts to other posters below - appears the ANZ card isn't exactly at spot rate?
also ANZ has included travel insurance if you spend $250 on the trip through the card
Do other cards match the 28 degrees in currency conversion nowadays? I've always used it abroad for the reason that it offered the best FX rate at point of sale (without relying on cash or an app) and even supported contactless/Apple Pay so I don't need to take the card out. They also were quick to send me a replacement card when I was travelling and had a fraud.
What happened while travelling and the fraud occurred? Do they send it to a mid point destination?
See my post below, ended up here as my spot rate say $1025 aud and my paypal rate for the ANZ rewards travel adventures came in at $1029.54 In the past i've tried dummy 28 degrees shops vs otehr cards whilst overseas at the same time and 28 degrees had always coem out near/pretty much at spot. I'm presuming the same here?
As i presume paypal would not change the conversion rate versus paying directly through the card (i.e. not through paypal)?
If I pay for something overseas with a card through PayPal I have the option of using Paypal's conversion rate, the card rate in A$ or the card rate in the foreign currency (that's with 28 Degrees or a Coles Mastercard).
As an example I bought something for £186 from the UK. PayPal conversion was about $19 more than using the card in UK£.! A normal credit card conversion rate wouldn't be that bad, but still not as good as a card that has no fees (like 28 Degrees).
So this is where you save using a card that allows using Mastercard base conversion rates (and I've read they are better than VISA).
However the complimentary travel insurance of a card may be worth getting a card for, but I'm yet to be convinced a rewards points card is worth being tied to the airlines and seemingly minimal options for redemption they offer.
I earned $660 in Flybuys last year from my Coles Mastercard and I'm not a huge spender. This seems much more usable to me than flight points.
I have the macqauiries black (previously Hilton one)
from what I see the rates are close to spot rates found on google
no fees and collect pointsnot sure if u can join that one these days for.no fee, was converted to that from hilton card
The difference would be negligible, due to one being Visa and the other using Mastercard rates.
ANZ earns points, 28 degrees doesn't - which is a pretty big difference.
Also debit cards like ING and Citibank also have no transaction fees which are great for overseas (again I have both I've used in the past)
For my upcoming trip my plan is to use my ANZ card and keep 28 degrees as a backup.
For my Europe trip next year i probably won't have the ANZ card as i want to cancel it to re-qualify for bonus points (in 12 months' time)
That’s a great idea. I’ll do the same and keep Citibank as my debit card
I've just put through a transation for 4750.45 DKK which was quoted as $1,025 on booking.com - on google it comes up about the same.
ANZ meanwhile is $1,029.54 - I am assuming the exchange rate on the ANZ card is slightly off from spot rate?
As i have tried 28 degrees numerous times in the past and it has been pretty much at the spot rate… in this case the difference is about $4… much better than fee charging cards. But $4/1025 is only 0.4c per $1 of spend for a point, still a decent earn rate. But if you don't need the points it seems you get a better conversion rate with 28 degrees?
Anyone care to add?
Just looks like visa rate
https://www.visa.com.au/travel-with-visa/exchange-rate-calcu…
https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/consumers/get-support/conver…
Would have saved 90c on the Mastercard
i thought visa and mastercard are typically close to xe.com spot rate for example.
Hence why in the past i didn't notice my 28 degrees as it was generally at the expected spot rate. IN this case the expected googled rate at the time was $1025, yet the charge on card is $1,029.54. Not life threatening, don't get me wrong - but clearly not just a slightly rounding difference to the spot rate?
@SaberX: visa/mastercard update their rates once a day whereas the spot rate fluctuates. I'm sure they add a little margin to pay for their hedging too
I haven't used both cards at the same time, but as an example i went to Fiji and on 31/12/2019 $35.26FJD cost $23.94 AUD
Looking online the current exchange rate works out to be $23.62 for today's date 15/01/2020
The difference would be between what Mastercard and Visa reference for calculating the exchange rate.
but the issue is your comparing a 31/12/2019 date to 15/01/2020? the only true way would be to make note of the fx rate or visa/mastercard reference rates relative to the time of booking? Which is why i screenshotted and found the discrepancy….i'll keep an eye out on holiday - maybe 2 purchases of water and see the diffference in pricing…. out of curiosity that is.
@SaberX: I couldn't predict someone was going to ask this question in the future? Lol.
I don't have any on the day or side by side examples to give as the 28 degrees i use as a back up.
According to the internetz the exchange rate for 31/12/2019 was;
Tuesday 31 December 2019 1 FJD = 0.66469 AUDSo exact rate was about $23.45
I'm not going to fuss over 50c of a discrepancy
Use a Coles Rewards Mastercard - no overseas transaction fees (so same as 28 Degrees), earn Flybuys worth 1% of spend. 28 Degrees for the Price Protection. ANZ Platinum for the travel insurance ($87 annual).
So all your rewards are in Flybuys which you can use for groceries and fuel. Or you can convert them to Velocity points (I don't know if that's worth it as I find flight points too restrictive).
the anz card has points