Best credit cards and bank accounts for travel

hugheskevi

My wife and I are going traveling for 2 years. I think the combination of credit cards and bank accounts below would be best, grateful for any thoughts and things I may have overlooked. Most travel will be in the Americas (north, central and south) but we will also head to Asia and Australasia and possibly Africa.

Bank accounts will be joint, the Barclaycard credit card will be in my wife's name and the Halifax card in my name, with secondary card-holders on both. I'll just take out the Chase bank account in my name (as they don't do joint accounts) and only use that to transfer money into from the other accounts and use for spending from for the first 12 months of our trip, not as a full bank account.

• Main credit card: Barclaycard Visa Rewards
• Secondary credit card: Halifax Clarity Mastercard
• Main bank account: Starling (Mastercard debit card)
  
• Secondary bank account: Virgin Money M Plus (Mastercard debit card)
• Primary Spending: Chase bank account (Mastercard debit card)

From this combination, I should get 1% on spending through the Chase account for 12 months (0.25% from Barclaycard after that), fee-free ATM withdrawals and fee-free spending. There is resilience from having a combination of Visa and Mastercard, back-ups in case of cards being suspended or lost, and use of different institutions for further resilience.

Just wondering if anyone can see anything I've missed, and whether there are any other accounts I should consider?

Alex9384

The 2 credit cards are probably the best you can get for travelling.

All 3 debit cards are MasterCard. I personally have Revolut debit card which is Visa. All the other fintechs use MasterCard. That's why I have Revolut and Wise, one is Visa and the other MC. Both apps can be used for converting multiple currencies, just in case I need it.

Btw, Chase has zero conversion fees? I have an account with them and didn't even realise this.