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Nationwide's free foreign withdrawals smoke and mirrors ?
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wombat42_2
Posts: 1,312 Forumite
This article suggests that many commision free foreign exchange deals are not good value at all as you get a poor exchange rate. The article does not explicity mention Nationwide but i wonder if the same applies to Nationwide and it is just smoke and mirrors.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/consumer/travel/article.html?in_article_id=477989&in_page_id=1093
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/consumer/travel/article.html?in_article_id=477989&in_page_id=1093
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Comments
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I can confirm that Nationwide do give an excellent exchange rate on Debit Card transactions at ATM's overseas.
Far better than any money exchange places.
So no " smoke and mirrors "..
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so can I - on average probably within 0.1% of interbank rates0
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I believe that N/W uses VISA for its o/seas transactions. VISA has huge buying power and does £m foreign exchange transactions so generally uses a much better exchange rate than you could get as an individual (eg changing money at the bank). I may be wrong (!?) but I think N/W's VISA transactions use the same rates as any other VISA transaction - but without the fee.0
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thats my understanding0
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Indeed, the £/ Euro rate on Visa is 1.13 at the moment.0
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how do you know ?0
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was it this ?
http://www.corporate.visa.com/pd/consumer_services/consumer_ex_results.jsp?from=GBP&to=EUR&rate=0.0
Currencies fluctuate every day. The rate shown is effective for
transactions submitted to Visa on February 23, 2009.
1 British Pound = 1.13 Euro
</SPAN>0 -
Yes indeed.;)0 -
My understanding is that if you buy goods abroad in the local currency using a credit or debit card, or withdraw the local currency from an ATM abroad using a debti card, then the exchange rate applied will be the standard one that VISA / Mastercard set - the card issuer doesn't have any influence on this rate, they can only decide whether to add their own percentage commission on top or not.0
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What others have said above is correct - Nationwide use the exact rate supplied to them by Visa on the date the transaction is carried out.
This is almost guaranteed to be the best possible rate you can find for foreign currency (whether you're talking about using a credit/debit card overseas, buying cash, getting a cheque from your bank in another currency, doing an electronic international transfer ...), because usually, banks will take the rate from Visa (or another similar rate), and deduct a percentage.
From Nationwide, you are definitely getting an excellent exchange rate.0
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