Lloyds Travel Smart

calmdavid

Hello everyone,

I am planning a trip to Florida in September and I am considering using Lloyds travel smart. This service allows you to use your debit card and the money comes straight out of your account as if you were in the UK. There are no fees and you can pay in local currency for a weekly fee of £7. 

I am wondering if this is a better option compared to using a pre-loaded credit card or something like the Halifax clarity card. I would appreciate hearing your thoughts on this idea from Lloyds.

Thank you.

jackieblack

I’m struggling to see what the benefit is that you’d be paying £7 a week for…
I’ve always just used foreign transaction fee free credit cards eg Halifax Clarity etc, paid off in full by the due date. 

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/travel-credit-cards/#bestbuys

DullGreyGuy

There are many fee free options to achieve the same so Lloyds needs to offer something significantly more than just fee free transactions to get me to buy... personally use Starling which is fee free all the time. 

CliveOfIndia

calmdavid said:

There are no fees and you can pay in local currency

This is exactly what Halifax Clarity and the other "Travel" credit cards offer - what extra benefit do you get for your £7 weekly fee?

I guess the only thing to watch is that, since it's a standard credit card, you need to pay it in full when the statement arrives to avoid interest.  If you always pay manually, then this may be a problem if you're abroad when the payment is due and you're unable to access online banking?  But even that potential issue is easily avoided by having a Direct Debit set up for the full amount.

Unless the weekly free provides a tangible benefit - that's worth more to you than the fee itself - I can't see any benefit to using it.

jbrassy

You don't need to pay £7 a month for this. There are other options out there which will let you spend abroad with zero fees for free.

In terms of debit cards, the best options are: Chase, Starling, First Direct, and Virgin Money. All let you spend abroad with no fees and do not charge fees on ATM withdrawals. 

In terms of credit cards, the best option is Barclaycard Rewards which also charges no fees (or interest) for spending abroad or ATM withdrawals, although bear in mind that withdrawing on a credit card may impact credit history, so best to do this on one of the debit cards mentioned above.

The following article has more info: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/travel-credit-cards/

calmdavid

Yes.....I thought I may be missing something . I normally use Halifax clarity and will continue to use that . Thankyou for the comments 

Marchitiello

I would strongly recommend opening a Chase UK account for travelling to the USA.

Aside of the 1% cash back at home and away, the near perfect MasterCard exchange rate and good interest rates on any balance kept in there, it has an almost unique feature of giving you free access to Chase US ATM (US banks charges non customers to use their ATM).

I would then carry the Halifax Clarity (or equivalent Back up credit card) for emergency or for the situation where it may be the only options (Hotels check-in and Car Rental collection). However, even when a CC is needed at arrival/collection, I have often switched to my Chase DC at check out or car return in order to earn some extra money as cashback.