Daughter spending 3 months in Australia - ? best card for spending & cash.

Korkyb

Hi all


I know that this has been covered on the main pages but I wanted to check that I am giving my 18 year old daughter the best advice.


She and her friend are heading to Australia for 3 months (visitors Visa) at the end of October.


Neither have credit cards and given their ages are unlikely to qualify for the obvious option of going for one of the best foreign use credit cards.


They have been offered a combined International Student Identity Card / Prepay card from STA Travel but I cant seem to find out very much information about it and how it stacks up against the competition (apart from the fact that ATM withdrawals are £2.25 / balance checks are 25p / 3% charge for some top up methods).
http://www.statravel.co.uk/sta-isic-cashcard.htm




I'm thinking that their best option would be:




- Main Card - Starling Debit Card (used as a prepay card).


- Backup Emergency Card - The ISIC Prepay card from STA (the student ID part is likely to be useful) only to be used if problems with the Starling Card.


- Backup (Backup) Emergency Card - their UK bank current account debit card. (hopefully never required to be used).




Obviously both travelers will have their own cards.


Does this seem reasonable or am I missing something.

eDicky

Forget the STA card, if you look at the fees and exchange rate loading compared to those of her regular bank debit card you are highly likely to find that the latter is cheaper to use.

Starling Bank is a real bank account and ideal for travel, I'm not sure what you mean by 'used as a prepay card'. There is even some interest paid on money in the account.

For backup there are Monzo, Revolut and Loot.io - use for payment by card when possible (same for Starling) as unlike Starling fee-free withdrawals are not unlimited. They cost nothing except the Revolut card, which is also free if you sign up via the MSE link.

NoodleDoodleMan

Perhaps your daughter could be on your credit card as an additional card holder ?

If accepted, and you open one of the "user friendly" cards for withdrawing foreign currency abroad this would be a winner for her - and you, for holidays abroad.

I don't know the banks' attitude to adding 18 year olds to a parent's card - but as you will be responsible for settling the balance it is worth investigating with a call to the banks which offer the best card deals.

Barclay Platinum Travel Card and Halifax Clarity are the best around, the former has no interest charges, so it just shades it IMO.

https://www.barclaycard.co.uk/personal/credit-cards/platinum-travel-credit-card

Starling card for backup.

Korkyb

Thanks for advice chaps!


I already have a Halifax Clarity card & hadn't considered adding her as a cardholder. I'll have a chat with her about it but think she might rather use her own account rather than everything effectively going through me.

worried_jim

Starling, Monzo, Revolut. Job done.

NoodleDoodleMan

I already have a Halifax Clarity card & hadn't considered adding her as a cardholder. I'll have a chat with her about it but think she might rather use her own account rather than everything effectively going through me.

A teenager refusing to be a customer of the "Bank of Dad" ..............wait until she's older !!!

Neil49

I used my Monzo card in Australia for a month earlier this year and virtually ended up using it instead of cash in most places. Starling is a better alternative if she needs to get cash out but we withdrew $300 on arrival (on our Clarity card) and had to make a conscious effort to use it up towards the end of the holiday as we had used Monzo virtually all the time.

They are very big on card usage out there but some places have a minimum spend restriction so cash is useful. We even found a petrol station that gave us a discount for paying by card rather than cash.

I just kept topping up the Monzo account from my main UK account via the Internet. Funds went on in seconds. Transactions appear on your smartphone within seconds showing a pending exchange rate which is then fixed a few days later. Usually the rate stayed as it was.

Gloomendoom

We use a combination of Starling and Halifax Clarity. Need to make sure that ATMs don't charge a fee. In my pretty recent experience, several Australian banks do although other dispute this. The Comonweath Bank ATMs didn't.