Post Office travel card

MariaMP

Sorry if this has been commented on recently, but all the posts about the Post Office card seem to be years old.  It doesn’t seem to be mentioned in the recently updated article. We got one a couple of years ago and used it for the US and Europe. At the time, we weren’t very confident about contactless purchases and particularly didn’t want to use our contactless Nationwide debit card for multiple transactions, even though fee free. We’ve just come back from our first foreign trip since the pandemic, visiting relatives in Canada so loaded Canadian dollars on the PO card and found it very convenient. Very easy to load from the app on my phone. Needless to say, we are now used to using contactless cards and comfortable doing so. I suspect the interest rate loading the card isn’t very good, and wondered whether it would be more sensible just to use our debit card
Thanks
Maria

eDicky

MariaMP said:

I suspect the interest rate loading the card isn’t very good, and wondered whether it would be more sensible just to use our debit card

Thanks
Maria

Your suspicion is correct Maria - depending on which bank's card, it would cost around the same or less to use than a PO prepaid card. The cost of converting back any unused CAD (or spending it away unnecessarily) adds to the expense.

If you'd like a completely fee-free card for travel just open a Starling Bank account on their phone app and it will arrive in a few days.

MariaMP

Thanks, I thought as much. I’ve got a Nationwide card which is fee free but don’t like the idea of using contactless on my main account. The times we’ve had fraudulent transactions have always been after trips abroad and our cards were then cancelled. We’ve stopped having additional cards on each other’s accounts since 5hey both get cancelled.  Leaving a balance isn’t a problem as we have family in Canada so will be visiting again