I wish they would issue credit cards soon. Every time I pay with credit card while travelling, my bank charges 1.5% for each transaction, in addition to bad conversion rate.
If you're in the UK, have a look at Monzo. Not a credit card, but very useful to use abroad. They don't charge a transaction fee when abroad, and the currency conversion is tracked to the MasterCard rate (whereas other providers tend to do card issuer + their own cut on top).
I'm a Monzo user and really unhappy to find this out. I spend most of my time in mainland Europe and the free transactions and no ATM fees are the only reason I am a user.
Can anyone comment on how Revolut compares? One pain point is that I always get asked if I want to pay in GBP or EUR, or even the cashier selects without asking me, in which case I get massively ripped off if they select GBP. With Revolut will the card look like a EUR card whilst travelling in the Eurozone?
I just used a Revolut card during a two week trip around Iceland. It worked fantastically well. Iceland's interesting as some places charge in Krona, some in Euro, but in either case I was charged the live mid-market rate to the GBP with no extra spread or fees.
You're also allowed to withdraw roughly £200/month worth of cash (any supported currency) without any fees. Beyond that there is a charge, I can't remember how much offhand but it's not too crazy.
The one problem I had with the card was at their petrol stations. Most are self-service and require the card to be pre-authed before the fuel will start being pumped. Revolut doesn't support this so I had to use another card or find stations where I could pay in store.
It's only for ATM withdrawals. If you are in first world country where card payments are well integrated this is not issue for you. Granted, in many developing countries you need cash so this will be issue.
I'm from EU (Slovakia) and not that far from Germany but surprisingly I have never been to Germany (not counting transit when I traveled through Germany in a train/bus or had to change flight) for some reason. I have always wanted to go but somehow I find places I want to go to more all the time so my travel to Germany keeps getting pushed down the list :D
… and bakeries, my god. I haven't seen a single bakery that accepts cards (EC or credit). Wanna buy €30 worth of cake to bring to work for your birthday? Nope, cash only.
From my experience though, Monzo has been much more reliable when traveling. It works in much more places in Asia for example. I traveled around Asia for a while before with my TSB UK debit card and it was getting declined almost everywhere, even in big cities like Hong Kong or Taipei (and yes I called TSB and told them I will be traveling Asia for few months in case they have some restrictions on debit cards in place, didn't help at all).
It got to a point I had to open local bank accounts and do wire transfers from my UK bank account to local bank accounts and use the local debit card. I just couldn't get my TSB/Lloyds card to work anywhere except high end western shops like Apple Store.
Hmm, that's surprising. I have traveled a lot in Asia (never to Australia though) and from that experience I know a lot of Asia is still cash based but Australia I'd expect every coffee / convenience shop to accept Visa/Mastercard.
That is fascinating. As someone who lives in Sydney's outer suburbs, I simply never need cash. For anything. It's almost the exact opposite of Germany, where I lived for most of the last 5 years.
For sure many coffee shops and convenience stores accept card, but I definitely find myself having to pay cash quite often (just for instance, the laksa place on Hunter street).
From Dec 18 Monzo will start charging fees for cash withdrawals abroad though. Which is relevant for people traveling to cash based countries (many in Asia) where cards only get accepted in high end stores and restaurants.
Depending on where you are from there might a better alternative.
In Europe, you have Revolut, N26 and Monzo which gives you a prepaid or debit MasterCard. Instead of the higher foreign transaction bank fees you will get either Mastercard’s or interbank rates, which is so much better than your traditional bank exchange rate.
Result is it's very cheap to use abroad. :)