M&S &More card + travel currency

pldd4

lswwong wrote: »

pldd4

I don't think your plan would work. I don't see how any UK based bureau de change would sell sterling cash ... their primary function is to trade their stock of foreign currencies for sterling cash.

Theoretically you could buy sterling travellers cheques from M&S using their &more card. Whether sterling travellers cheques can be banked in UK mainland I don't know.

Thanks for that, thats what i initially thought.

They charge 1% for sterling traveller cheques so that would be £15 on £1500 worth of cheques.

I wonder if another option is to buy it in euro's or $'s commission free and then just get them to buy it back commission free into £ sterling to put into my bank account?

Cheers

YorkshireBoy

pldd4 wrote: »

They charge 1% for sterling traveller cheques so that would be £15 on £1500 worth of cheques.

But you should be able to better that in a savings account for 7 months...surely?

Not as profitable as my 12 month deal which I've just repaid, but you may think it's still worth it.

Swapping around in currencies will be subject to a buy/sell spread so will be guaranteed to make you a loss.

pldd4

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

But you should be able to better that in a savings account for 7 months...surely?

Not as profitable as my 12 month deal which I've just repaid, but you may think it's still worth it.

Swapping around in currencies will be subject to a buy/sell spread so will be guaranteed to make you a loss.

I'm not getting the money just to leave in a savings account its to pay an invoice, so that i can then pay with a cheque from my current account.

What do you think the best way is? Thanks

lswwong

Hmm .... you say your ultimate objective is to turn around a quick (ostensibly low cost) cash loan to pay off an invoice now and repay it over a period of time.

The &more card advantage only works with "purchases" and in your case, purchases of foreign currency cash from the M&S bureau de change ONLY. Unless of course, you buy, say, cash euros from M&S using the card and then sell the cash notes to another changer to change it back into sterling. You will very likely suffer a loss doing this in terms of both exchange rate and charges.

However, I stand to be corrected.