Travel credit cards

A couple of things I have noticed about the Tandem card:

When you want to pay off the amount of a cash withdrawal you have made, the payment goes first to the cash withdrawal, not to any purchases made even if they have already appeared on your statement. This is useful when making such payments to reduce daily interest accruing on withdrawals. With most other cards payments go towards already statemented purchases first, so it's easier with Tandem. This was explained and confirmed to me when I enquired via the in-app chat, although I'm unable to confirm it by personal experience (this month).

Usually when a credit card is used to withdraw foreign currency from a MoneyCorp multicurrency ATM at a UK airport, selecting 'Without Conversion' to circumvent the imposition of MoneyCorp's own dreadful exchange rate, it is converted by the card and recognised as a foreign transaction without any cash advance fee (if it's a 'travel' card without overseas fees). But with Tandem this is not the case, the conversion is made at the MasterCard rate but the UK location of the ATM is recognised and a 'Cash Advance Fee' is imposed by Tandem. I discovered this when withdrawing $200 at Stansted recently - the fee of £3.54 appeared and was explained by CS as above, but they refunded it as a one-off goodwill gesture at my request.

I think there was something else I also noticed, if I remember I'll add it later...

...Ah yes - when you make a transaction or withdrawal in a foreign currency a notification is given as usual and it is shown immediately in the app, but only as an amount in pounds. Don't despair that you may have been charged in pounds by mistake, a couple of days or so later when the transaction settles the final amount in both pounds and the local currency will be shown. Tandem differs again in this from most cards, where usually the provisional amount in both currencies is shown from the outset. The Tandem app doesn't display the exchange rate given, you have to calculate it yourself if needed.

The app is not yet showing any improvement in the couple of months I've been using it - hopefully it will do so - perhaps they should poach a few decent app developers from Revolut..!

Thanks a lot for the advice! After further research, my Revolut card basically corresponds to Starling or Loot in terms of using it for cash withdrawals abroad, so will use that and get the Virgin for purchases (and backup) since it's 0% for a year.

I've just read tandem t&C's and there is nothing in there that states I cant make an upfront payment