Credit card for holiday in Switzerland

addictive_saver

Hi,

I have two credit cards, Lloyds TSB Classic & MorganStanley Platinum (Now Goldfish)..

I am planning to use one of these cards during my holiday in Switzerland.

I asked both the credit card companies, Lloyds says they charge 2.75% on each transaction and MorganStanley 2%.

I enquired with my friend who used his Lloyds TSB Classic card recently in Switzerland. As per him, the conversion rate they charged was pretty same one could get in local Bureau-de-change (like M&S)..

My understanding is, they must be applying 2.75% on the Mastercard/Visa wholesale currency exchange rate (which is better than what we get in bureau-de-change). Thus, we really don't loose anything even if we use these credit cards abroad because anyways we get the same rate we would have got had we converted cash.

If I opt to use MorganStanley card (2% charge), it will be even better than lloyds tsb and I might get even better rate than high-street bureau-de-change.

Am I right here?? :rolleyes:

lisyloo

Yes I think you are right but you would be even better off getting one which charges 0% like Nationwide as then you'd be paying just the wholesale rate.

Depends on how much travel you do really as to whether it's worth our while.

King_Of_Fools

Yes the 2.75% is applied on the Visa/Mastercard rate, which will be between the buy and sell tourist rates. So you will probably be better off even paying 2.75% than using tourist exchanges to get cash.

The rates used by all Visa cards are the same (ditto for Mastercard rates). So you would be better off using your Morgan Stanley over the Lloyds TSB. You will find that most of us on here have either a Nationwide Visa or Post Office Mastercard (or both) that have no charge to save even more money.