Currensea Travel Card

CraigMassey

Has anyone used this card - claims no pre-loading of currency, no transaction fees, works with every currency as it draws funds from a current account using a direct debit.

Good or bad? What's the catch?

daveyjp

The catch?  Its not free unlike any other number of cards.

FX markup
While our premium plans have no FX markup, we charge a nominal FX markup on our Essential Plan of 0.5% per transaction, allowing us to make revenue from our Essential Plan whilst remaining much cheaper than other prepaid cards and high-street debit cards. We also charge an FX markup on ATM usage over the free amount on all our plans, full details can be found on our pricing plans.

Subscription fees
We charge an annual subscription fee of £25 for our Premium Plan, and £120 for our Elite Plan. The subscription fee also removes all FX markup on transactions.

Appears to be trying to fill a niche which is already full.

CraigMassey

Yeah I saw that - but there's a free plan also that doesn't charge any fee, you can withdraw up to £200 in cash machines abroad and there are STILL no transaction fees on payments while you are abroad. I can't see any drawbacks at all with this...???

NoodleDoodleMan

Better with a Chase debit card - ticks off all the boxes for travel.

eDicky

For me it would be hard to justify the added complication, with cost of 0.5% markup, when so many fee-free debit cards can be used directly.

jbrassy

As other people have said, there are better options than Currensea which do not cost anything. Chase, Starling, and First Direct do not charge any mark up on foreign transactions and allow you to withdraw much more than £200 a month with no fees. For example, First Direct allows you to withdraw £500 a day with no fees.

Macano

CraigMassey said:

Yeah I saw that - but there's a free plan also that doesn't charge any fee, you can withdraw up to £200 in cash machines abroad and there are STILL no transaction fees on payments while you are abroad. I can't see any drawbacks at all with this...???

Just use your domestic bank card abroad and always select the local currency when prompted at the ATM, this means you avoid dynamic currency conversion and use the Visa and Mastercard exchange rate, which, to be honest, is hard to beat.

Nothing free about Currensea as they charge on the exchange rate: Looking at their pricing on withdrawing euros abroad, right now:

The spot pound to euro exchange rate @ 16:18 on Feb 11: 1.20 (handy).
The Currensea essential (their free plan): 1.1940 (so your charge is a chunky 60 pip on the spread, Mastercard or Visa would be much tighter).
The Currensea Pro & Elite plans: 1.20 (bang on the market, so no spread charge).

But the Pro & Elite subs start at 40 quid a year.

There's always a fee in the world of FX.