M&S Credit Card for buying Currency

grumbler

chuckley wrote: »

fees/fee's/fleas. who really cares?

Literate people or those who aim to be literate.

CCs

Mind you that's a lot of daily checking and paying and such on holiday. I really don't have the time to constantly repay a few grand's holiday spends at a daily/every few days.

Those who spend several grands cash on a holiday normally don't give a 5hit about fees and interest.

just spend (.../debit) or card spend and repay on statement (Aqua).

Absolutely.

The way you guys have to 'work' the Clarity, leaves a lot less holiday time.

Not really.

To be honest though I only got the aqua for a transaction that only accepted cc's. I don't really have plans to live on it for overseas spends.

It's opposite for me. Most spending is on a card; small amount of cash for the places that don't take cards.

The fact remains: Clarity is a rare CC that charges neither for currency conversion, nor for ATM withdrawals. Combined with reasonably low representative APR, this, not 'MSE', makes it one of the best cards for using abroad.

swindiff

I use my Clarity card for purchases and cash withdraws abroad. I pay no fees and no interest. As soon as I have completed the transaction I make an on-line payment using my phone. You get the current Mastercard exchange rate which is better than any exchange rate you will get actually changing cash and there are no fee's. For me this is without doubt the cheapest and most convenient way of spending whilst abroad. I have the Clarity card exclusively for that purpose.

YorkshireBoy

swindiff wrote: »

As soon as I have completed the transaction I make an on-line payment using my phone.

Even for purchase transactions? If not, ie only for cash, then be mindful of your statement date falling mid-holiday. Condition 6.1 of your Clarity T&Cs explains why.

swindiff

Yes purchase transactions as well. Although I only tend to use it for fairly large purchase transactions. Small purchases I will make using cash that I have withdrawn on the card.

Maelwys

chuckley wrote: »

just spend (cash/debit) or card spend and repay on statement (Aqua). The way you guys have to 'work' the Clarity, leaves a lot less holiday time. For that I have no time.

From http://travelmoney.moneysavingexpert.com/holiday-money/

Today, £100 buying Euros gets:

• €142.09 on the MasterCard exchange rate
• €131.24 on the next best (Exchange.com)
• €131.14 on the next best (Tesco)

The difference between the top two is £10.85 (or a drop of 7.636%)

The WORST rate a poor credit scorer will get on the Clarity is 25.9% APR. So factoring in compounding, you'd need to delay paying back an ATM withdrawl on a Clarity Card for a total of 104 DAYS for it to not be the most cost-effective option. And 104 days is obviously longer than the time between monthly payment invoices.

Most Banks in Europe don't charge a usage fee for their ATMs, but the MAXIMUM that I've seen listed anywhere for "independent" ATMs is 4%. That'd bring it down to 51 days until a Clarity ATM withdrawl was knocked off the top spot... which is still longer than the time between monthly payment invoices.

TL;DR: ATM withdrawls on a Clarity actually beat any other standard cash-in-hand exchange rate. At least if you're withdrawing a reasonable amount of money.

grumbler

S/he advocates prepaid cards in general and Caxton in particular.
Caxton's current rate is 1.3676 €/£.

If your 1.4209 is correct, this means 3.9% difference, i.e. more than 100 days' interest for 0.03% per day.

YorkshireBoy

grumbler wrote: »

If your 1.4209 is correct...

Without wishing to doubt, it does seem a little on the high side to me. I was just about scraping 1.43 back in June, but by September/October it was down to 1.36 (on both my Metro Bank Debit MasterCard and Santander Zero). Didn't use Nationwide Select this year so have no Visa comparison.

swindiff

You are correct that it was 1.36 in October. That's what I got in Magaluf. But it is now 1.42.
https://www.mastercard.com/global/currencyconversion/

Maelwys

grumbler wrote: »

S/he advocates prepaid cards in general and Caxton in particular.
Caxton's current rate is 1.3676 €/£.

If your 1.4209 is correct, this means 3.9% difference, i.e. more than 100 days' interest for 0.03% per day.

Yup. So the Clarity would not only beat any over-the-counter exchanges but would also win against Prepaid cards for ATM cash withdrawls. And if s/he wants to make a purchase rather than an ATM withdrawl then the Clarity (or the Aqua!) would win hands-down (since not only will s/he be getting the best exchange rate, but there'll also be zero interest to pay...)

It looks like even if you never did anything special for ATM withdrawls and just paid your full balance every month on time, the Clarity would still comfortably beat anything else.

I'm not really seeing a drawback here to always using a Clarity Card for everything, other than the fact that the 0.5% cashback on the Aqua will slightly edge it out for foreign purchases.

(and I checked the Mastercard base rate just before I posted - it's definitely 1.4209!)

swindiff

Another bonus of the Clarity card is it will allow you to withdraw cash to your halifax current account free of charge. Very cheap (even free) way of borrowing money. Withdraw the cash from your Clarity card then transfer the balance to a different 0% card. This is how I funded my son's first car purchase. He is paying of the loan at 0%