Whats the Cheapest Card to Use Abroad

unclehairy101

Hi,

I am going to New Zealand for three weeks and was wondering what is the best way for me to bring money?

I see on this site there are some recommended specialist travel credit cards like the Halifax Clarity.

I was planning to get one of these and put all my money on it before I left so the card would be in credit and then use it to withdraw cash when I am there and use it to pay for things. Is this a good idea and what charges can I expect to pay by doing this?

Thanks

scottishblondie

Halifax Clarity is the cheapest to use abroad, it has no fees etc for using it. However, loading it is against the T&Cs. If you try to purposefully put it into credit then it's possible they'll just return the money, or they could cancel the card for breaching the terms.

TBH you'd be better off using the card to pay for things directly, withdraw cash as needed and pay it all off as soon as you get home to minimise interest on the cash withdrawls. If you have internet access then you could make payments whilst you're away.

unclehairy101

Thanks, does that mean I can avoid all charges so long as I pay it off on time?

balmk

There will be interest charges for cash advances, but it is worth weighing these up with the transaction charges levied with both pre-pay and current account debit cards.

horngkai

New Zealand should be safe and widely available option of using the card to pay for goods directly. The mastercard exchange rate are better than money changer or ATM most of the time (as per my experience, though I am not sure if you withdraw cash with this card, whether they actually use the mastercard exchange rate or the bank exchange rate from the ATM). And since there is no interest charged for purchases if you pay it off within 50 days of transaction, it would be cheaper than using it to withdraw cash.

scottishblondie

As blmk says - purchases on the card will not attract interest as long as you pay by the due date, but the cash withdrawals will start accruing interest from the date of withdrawal. However even on fairly large amounts the interest will be quite low.

E.g., if you get the Clarity at the headline rate (12.9%) and withdraw £1000 on the first day of your holiday, you would be charged roughly £8.83 in interest if you pay off after 21 days. If you get the higher rate of 21.9% it would be roughly £12.60. If you just withdraw as you need during the holiday you would pay less interest on a total of my example sum of £1k. This is still far cheaper than any other method of withdrawing cash abroad that I know of.

EDIT - cross post with above. AFAIK they use the Mastercard rate.