Pay money into credit card account before travelling to avoid ATM interest?

dadahmmya

I've only joined the forums tonight, and already this is my second obscure question!

I'm off abroad soon for a week, and I have one of the better credit cards for spending abroad, the Santander Zero. The only problem with it is that it charges nearly 30% APR on cash withdrawals, even if you pay the balance off in full.

So I was wondering if I paid a few hundred pounds into my credit card account before leaving the UK, would I be able to avoid this interest?

What do you think? I suspect it'll be easier just to get a couple of hundred euros in the UK for cash spending, and just spend on the card whenever possible, but I wondered if my idea would be possible.

CLAPTON

CC don't generally allow cards to be preloaded and might simply bounce the amount back


and 30% on £100 for a couple of weeks is 100 x 30% / 26 = £1.15p

Gromitt

Think about it, 30% APR for 1 week on a couple of hundred (I assume you'll pay it back as soon as return from your holiday).

Compared to breaking your T&Cs.

Is it worth it for a few quid?

zerog

If you have internet access you can just pay off the amount you withdraw in cash straight away.

Eydon

zerog wrote: »

If you have internet access you can just pay off the amount you withdraw in cash straight away.

Assuming the order of payments work that way. It may well be that the payment will go towards statemented balances first, in which case you would have to wait for the transaction to appear on the statement (not just appear online) before paying it off.

But as already said above, the interest on a few hundred pounds even for a couple of weeks is pretty small (very roughly 60p per £100 per week).

HappyMJ

Why withdraw cash when spending is free of charges? I imagine you would use the cash to spend with so just pull the card out at every opportunity and spend using the card instead. I'd take maybe £100 worth of local currency that you have previously exchanged over here for small expenses as you have suggested to yourself.

dadahmmya

Thanks all. I'll check the T's & C's to double check, but you're probably right about it not being allowed. My main credit card for a long time was the Egg Money card, which even paid interest on credit balances, so that's what made me hope that credit balances might be ok.

I might do a quick check to see whether the few quid of ATM interest is more/less than what I'd pay to get euros in the UK.

But yeah, HappyMJ, I am planning to pay mostly on card, so it'll probably only be a couple of hundred quid for beer money & incidentals.

YorkshireBoy

dadahmmya wrote: »

I'll check the T's & C's to double check, but you're probably right about it not being allowed.

I can assure you it's there in the T&Cs (I have the card myself).

I might do a quick check to see whether the few quid of ATM interest is more/less than what I'd pay to get euros in the UK.

At 27.9% APR it's 2.0718% per month.

To put that into perspective, I've just returned from a holiday in the Euro zone and got (as near as dammit) 1.26 Euros to the pound on my Santander Zero card. On the Sterling I changed here before I went I got 1.22 Euros to the pound.

That's a difference of 3.3%, so you'd need to be carrying a cash balance for longer than 6 weeks for you to 'lose out'.

dadahmmya

Perfect! All the information I was after in one post, and I don't have to go and do the maths myself! Thanks YorkshireBoy!