Travel specialist card vs National card

Mikkelzzz3 wrote: »

I am definitely right though.

1: went to Mastercard currency converter, typed 1000 dkk, and it showed me what I would get in pound.

2: Then I went to my danish banks currency converter, and typed in the same amount of pound Mastercard showed, and it showed me the 1109 dkk for the same amount of pound.,

So my calculations are right.

Your calculations may be right but your understanding of the numbers you are seeing is completely wrong.

1. The Mastercard site shows how much you would pay in GBP when you spend in DKK. So, if you buy something for 1000 DKK in Denmark and pay with your UK card, you will be charged £123.66.

2. The Danske Bank site shows how much you would pay in DKK when you spend in GBP. So, if you buy something for £123.66 in the UK and pay with your Danish card, you will be charged 1109 DKK.


That sounds about right to me. Scandinavian banks are raking it in with their crap exchange rates.

All those people living in Malmö and commuting to Copenhagen are losing so much money on exchange rates if they don't pay attention. And this is part of the reason why the banks (at least in Sweden) are anti-cash - they love getting all this extra money from nowhere.

If you have 75000 DKK and you want to convert it to SEK, by far the cheapest way to do it is to book a low cost flight to Gdansk in Poland and exchange cash. The only problem is that your Swedish bank will probably fire you as a customer for trying to deposit more cash than they usually get in a month.

In fact if you get a cheap enough flight, it will be cheaper to fly all the way to Thailand and exchange cash there, than going to the scam artists known as Forex Bank.

Back on topic, the general rule if you have accounts in several countries which all have money in them, is to always spend in the same currency! Only when you don't have enough (or predict that you don't have enough) of one currency, then you consider converting - unless you live in Thailand and enjoy spending your day queueing at a currency exchange to crystallise gains in the rate.