Good card for using abroad..?

Shinds

Hello all,

My friend needs a good credit card to use abroad, as he's going travelling in April.

I personally recommended the Nationwide Gold Card, as it offers:

'commission free purchases abroad'

...so what other cards could you recommend please

Thanks.

aj3001

Nationwide Classic would work too

Either that or Post Office

lisyloo

Nationwide debit card is good if you want to draw cash from ATMs.

Note that you should not "pre load" your Nationwide credit card.
Nationwide tell me your money is not insured so in the case of fraud you would lose your money.
They insure THEIR money (in debt) but not YOUR money (in credit).

tiff

Hi Lisyloo, you said the NW card is good for withdrawing cash, is it ok for spending abroad using the debit card?

lisyloo

Yes.

For Nationwide CREDIT card they charge 0% commission on purchases but there is interest and a fee for withdrawing cash at ATMS (because it's a cash advanace i.e. not your money).

For Nationwide DEBIT card they charge 0% on purchses and nothing at ATMS, but of course you are spending your own money as this isn't credit.

Be aware that some ATMs may themselves charge (this is not Nationwide charging, it's the bank that owns the ATM).

Also avoid local (dymanic) currency conversion.
If an ATM or shop offers to do the conversion the say NO.
They will charge you 2.75% or more for commission on the currency exchange to GBP £s.
If you get them to charge you in local (foreign) currency then Nationwide charge you 0% for the conversion to £s.

Hope that's clear.

tiff

Thats brilliant, thanks. I have a Nationwide debit card on the way but wanted to be sure in my mind that it works the way I think it does. Will just keep this debit card with our passports to take on holiday, trying to remember to credit it with spending money first.

King_Of_Fools

If you are planning on hiring a car then you will need a credit card rather than a debit card. Also some places abroad only accept credit cards and not debit cards. So I would say that it is worth having both.

Compound_2

King_Of_Fools wrote: »

If you are planning on hiring a car then you will need a credit card rather than a debit card. Also some places abroad only accept credit cards and not debit cards. So I would say that it is worth having both.

As far as I was aware, Visa credit and debit cards are indistinguishable in foreign transactions (in contrast to Mastercard/Maesto and Visa Electron). Visa Debit can and will be processed as a Visa credit card. It’s only within the UK there’s a cheaper system (originally called Delta) for processing debit card transactions.

student100

I agree that a Nationwide card is the way to go.

However, given the choice of Nationwide's range I'd go for the Comic Relief card... not only do you get commission-free purchases abroad, but Comic Relief benefit when you take out the card (£6 donation) and from every purchase (normally 0.5%, but in March this year 1%, to "celebrate Red Nose Day").