Travelling abroad? Santander offers 1% cashback on overseas spending but watch out for the fees

Former_MSE_James_F

New and existing Mastercard credit card customers at Santander are now able to earn 1% cashback on overseas spending but the option will still be overly expensive for many with most of the bank's cards charging a 2.95% exchange fee. Here's everything you need to know.

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'Travelling abroad? Santander offers 1% cashback on overseas spending but watch out for the fees'

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NoodleDoodleMan

Interesting.

We have the Santander Zero credit card - no ATM fees when taking currency from a Santander branded ATM in Spain and the Canaries - but I don't think withdrawing Euros will be eligible for the £500 spend criteria, as it would for goods and services.

eskbanker

NoodleDoodleMan said:

Interesting.

We have the Santander Zero credit card - no ATM fees when taking currency from a Santander branded ATM in Spain and the Canaries - but I don't think withdrawing Euros will be eligible for the £500 spend criteria, as it would for goods and services.

Indeed, the offer terms at https://www.santander.co.uk/assets/s3fs-public/documents/genh1358jun22h_digital.pdf make it clear that it's only purchases of goods and services and not cash advances and all sorts of other exclusions:

‘Eligible Purchases’ are purchases of goods and services made by eligible cardholders or additional cardholders. Eligible Purchases do not include balance transfers, cash advances, travellers’ cheques, foreign currency and money orders, interest, unauthorised or fraudulent transactions, account charges of any kind (if applicable), advances used for lottery or gambling payments, or Direct Debits or standing orders paid into the account.

adindas

NoodleDoodleMan said:

Interesting.

We have the Santander Zero credit card - no ATM fees when taking currency from a Santander branded ATM in Spain and the Canaries - but I don't think withdrawing Euros will be eligible for the £500 spend criteria, as it would for goods and services.

I think it is clearly highlighted by the MSE article that it is for overseas "spending" not ATM withdrawal. Also I do not think any bank will give people cashback for ATM withdrawal, at least I never see. Let alone if this is a zero fee debit card which is actually a money losing exercise for them.

NoodleDoodleMan

Thanks both for confirming my assumption.

Marchitiello

NoodleDoodleMan said:

Interesting.

We have the Santander Zero credit card - no ATM fees when taking currency from a Santander branded ATM in Spain and the Canaries - but I don't think withdrawing Euros will be eligible for the £500 spend criteria, as it would for goods and services.

Santander Zero Credit Card is also Forex Free on spending abroad, so ideal for this promo

pedrodelgado

Bit cheeky really , trying to get unsuspecting people to use their card on holiday with the headline promise of 1% but no headline of the actual charges for using all but the zero card overseas. How many are going to get home and realise they have paid 2.99% for the bargain of getting 1% cashback?

capsloch

Exactly what I thought. PLUS whatever ripoff conversion rate Mastercard is using. It's not actually clear what the "currency conversion fee" is for because the bank doesn't do it (or that's what I was told by their chat guy). Still 1.95% with the cash back is better than many. 

eDicky

capsloch said:

Exactly what I thought. PLUS whatever ripoff conversion rate Mastercard is using. It's not actually clear what the "currency conversion fee" is for because the bank doesn't do it (or that's what I was told by their chat guy). Still 1.95% with the cash back is better than many. 

Their chat guy is ignorant or lying (or misunderstanding arose), it's the card provider that adds the markup.

The daily MasterCard conversion rate is far from a ripoff, usually only varying slightly from the interbank rate average over the day.

enthusiasticsaver

I have just moved our main bank account from Santander to Starling because of the FX fees. 2.99% is too  high as we are away in Canada for a month later on this year. I have been less and less enamoured with Santander anyway since they dropped the interest they were paying on current account balances and upped the fees. We are just on Santander Lite now and will just keep it for the utilities cashback. No FX fees with Starling. 

Superhoopza

pedrodelgado said:

Bit cheeky really , trying to get unsuspecting people to use their card on holiday with the headline promise of 1% but no headline of the actual charges for using all but the zero card overseas. How many are going to get home and realise they have paid 2.99% for the bargain of getting 1% cashback?

Quite a few of the cards such as the All in One card have no FX fee so this will be a benefit to use it abroad.