My son (23) is heading for a 5 week trip to Europe (Germany, Spain, UK) in three days.
He asked today which are the best ways to pay in Europe without being stung with bad exchange rates. He has currently a Commonwealth Bank travel card. Of course he left it to the last minute so new local cards will probably not be ready in time. He's got both Australian and German passports.
Any suggestions?
mainly daily living expenses and lodging/ local flights.
Does he have any other bank cards that are from this list:
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/wiki/cards_with_no_overseas_tra…
Otherwise your options are either bringing AUD to exchange locally when you get there (highly risky carrying around loads of cash), using that CBA debit card and being charged 3% for purchases or $5 + 3% for ATM withdrawals, getting a travel cash card (rates quite poor but you can lock rates in).
Note that Germany is mostly a cash society and the UK is quite card friendly. I've never been to Spain so can't comment there.
Note that Germany is mostly a cash society
True but also can just ATM withdrawal with one of the cards on that list (I use Macq Bank as my main, and Citi (probably going to cease with acquisition by NAB) as a spare)
it is not that bad as few years ago, just got back from Deutschland. Smaller/cheaper cafes and restaurants are indeed cash only.
Some of those have instant digital card provisioning as well, so he could sign up now and be using a digital card on his phone within half an hour — with Osko you can transfer $ in and be ready to go very quickly. I'm with Up and have had an instant digital card via Apple Pay but their website states that Google & Samsung are also instant (not Fitbit or Garmin). I'm sure other banks would have the same feature.
I used the Citibank plus card in those places and works well, exchange rate seemed very reasonable.
Maybe visit a branch and see what they can do?
Macquarie for an instant Apple Pay Card ?
Citibank card?
Wise account, super easy and well designed
For everyone one noting the Citi card, their card to date has been a great financial offering (albeit with poor customer service and a terrible mobile app) with no fx fees or international atm fees. Despite its miniscule part in the Australian consumer market they've utilised their global presence and infrastructure to provide us with no int'l atm/transaction fees.
However, as of 1 June 2022, Citi's Australian consumer operations have been acquired by NAB. A status-quo is for now being maintained, but I'd expect NAB to consolidate these customers into its existing offerings and slowly remove aspects of the consumer business that aren't necessarily profit generating (i.e. most definitely these Citi Transaction accounts). With NAB having no competitive transaction accounts with no int'l fees I'd say the future of these citi cards seems grim
Also for the customer service side. My mates and I had our cards skimmed in an ATM when in Italy in 2019. Was at the airport, approx. a week, later catching a flight from Hungary to outside the EU when the charges came through on our cards (approx. $800 each, across three staggered transactions for each of us) and we got phone notifications one by one. Now thankfully I used the Citi card (which was my backup card) on that particular ATM, whilst my mates used their Macquarie ones (their only cards, and what was my primary card), and each one of us were targeted within 5-10min of each other. We were all on the phone to the Australian call centres within 5 mins and Macquarie nearly instantly connected them to an Australian operator and once they explained the situation (which the Aussie immediately understood) Macquarie instantly cancelled both their cards and re-issued new ones to their Australian addresses (parents would mail them to us) and likewise provisioned the replacement Apple Pay cards so that they could make mobile payments (I still had my Macquarie card for ATM withdrawals for us all). Citi on the other hand, gave me an operator (some Filipino guy) who couldn't comprehend what I was telling him and tried to argue with me that I was making the ATM withdrawals (mind you the location of the cash withdrawals for these scammers was Indonesia) and had me transferred to the dispute department. I then had to explain for a further 10min (to another foreigner who had a hard time comprehending the situation I was telling him) that it was impossible for me to be withdrawing the cash as I was located on the other side of the world (and at which point I was boarding the plane) . After a lot of back and forth, they then said that the card would be cancelled, with no subsequent action to be taken until this dispute was resolved. The estimated timeframe for this was 6-8 weeks and on top of that the account was frozen for online banking (I told them to deposit the remaining funds in the Macquarie account which took a week). Citi didn't support Apple Pay at the time anyways so that card was lost on me and the cash was refunded to the account about 2 months after that date.
My mates had no back up cards so relied on me and I'm thankful I did because I'd otherwise have no access to funds.
OP make sure your son has multiple back up cards (from different banks) for potential situation like this, but it looks like he messed up leaving this to the last minute.
When i was in a high skim country I found an easy solution
Keep your transaction account as $0 at all times, when you want to use the ATM, transfer some money in, withdraw the entire balance and then your account will be $0.
You can't skim an empty bank account!
The card was a back-up for the off chance I lost the Macquarie card, and if that were to happen, waiting for a transfer wasn't practical (only had one transaction account with Citi, so transferring from an external bank would've taken at least a day). I left $1000 in the account for this reason, and for some unbeknown reason I decided to put the Citi card in my pocket when heading to the ATM (I think it was to test that it would work and I had no PIN issues).
I had no idea that Italy was a skimming country at the time, and did research to use only large banks and prominent ATMs to withdraw.
The ATM in question was one outside a BNL (BNP Paribas) branch in Southern Italy, and with BNP Paribas being the largest bank in the Eurozone you'd think it would be safe.
My solution to the issue immediately after (we were in the Balkans so didn't want to use the only card there) was to temporarily lock the Macquarie card I had.
Unlock it only for a 10min period, in which I used the Airport ATM to withdraw plenty of cash, distributed it across my mates and I and then locked the card and had them transfer me. We repeated this a couple times (and lived off my cash payments/ their apple pay) until their physical cards arrived.
What I meant was, you transfer internally, so transfers are instant and take 20 seconds to perform in the app.
@samfisher5986: yeah i know what you meant. The citi card was in all honesty a pure worst-case scenario backup. I didn't have it in my wallet, but rather stored it in my hand luggage with my passport. If I was to get mugged and didn't have immediate access to a phone/wallet then at least I could have something to get me access to cash. But what you're saying makes sense for a backup. But when for a main card, and the fact that most people use Apple/Google Pay, there is always going to be a need to have cash in the account
IMHO, cards in that list, and pretty much all debit/credit cards are better than almost all cards marketed as "travel cards" for spot exchange rates - they use the bank/their own exchange rates to convert currency.
They are only better if you exchanged currency in advance and that rate was good compared to the time you're travelling, which involves a lot of luck and research. Again at the time of exchange you got a bad deal.
Visa/Master exchange rates are better than bank exchange rates at any given time, but I haven't compared Wise/Revolut spot rates yet.
Exactly, people forget that travel cards and everything else has to make a profit somehow.
The only reason you can get away with it for normal bank withdrawals is that the bank assumes they make money based on holding your money, card transactions etc.
It probably depends on what you/he defines as "bad" exchange rates.
The AUD/EUR and AUD/GBP at a retail level change daily, so that is out of his control unless happy to lock in the rate now. Will there be some significant expenses, or is it just daily living expenses?