Credit or Debit card

Hi Nipper, If you live in the UK a Nationwide BS credit card is the best option I know of , they don't charge a fee for European transactions, if youre ROI based sorry can't help.

Bill

Hi Nipper,

We take our debit card as an emergency back up, but use a Post Office credit card (serviced by Bank of Ireland) as it is commission free. We have also in the past preloaded the card, so in the event of having to with draw cash at an ATM no interest is charged.

Remember to notify your bank and credit card supplier that you are going in case they block the card due to unusual usage.

For ATM withdrawals and general debit card spending I use a Preloaded card from My travel cash. http://www.mytravelcash.com/
The card is free, earns cashback, and can be used in most places. You will only be charged if it lies idle for a year.

The other advantage is that you can reload it by phone whilst abroad or when at home watch the currency exchange rates and load when they are good. It also restricts your losses if stolen although if you report it, the card issuer will cancel it and issue a fresh one with no loss of load.

Remember to always pay in the local currency if offered a choice of euro or sterling by the trader as you may be charged at an extortionate rate if you choose sterling !!

Most of this info is readily available on www.moneysavingexpert.com

Not sure how it all works if you are based in the south and your cards are euro based.

Davy

Hi Nipper,

Yes, we use the Post Office card for aires, petrol, food etc. not used it for tolls though, as we keep off the motorways. The card was only refused once this year. on the last day of a three week trip a Leclerc fuel station reader refused it. I used my Bank debit card and ten minutes later the Post Office card was accepted in the main Leclerc store for food. Could just as easily have happened at home.

The other benefit to the P O card is that the call centre is based in Ireland, so no difficulties there.

The preloaded debit cards do not work off a 'live' chip and pin so my understanding is they do not work at tolls as there are no phone connections to verify the mount. Similar problem at unmanned fuel stations. At manned fuel stations the transaction will be reserved on your account at a greater than actual amount until the transaction processes a few days later, and for this reason they are also not good/accepted for hotel or car hire reservations.

The draw of the pre loaded card for me is the interest free ATM usage. We also use it as we get near the end of a holiday use for shopping, food etc to run down the amount of credit until the next planned trip.

Davy

post office credit card, no foreign transaction fees or annual charge

We have used our Santander debit card before but it's an additional £1.50 for every use for purchase & £1.99 to drawn from an ATM. You could live with this in an emergency or even to fill the tank if nearly empty, but on the whole some of the other solutions above would need to be considered for a longer trip. I hate to be a bean counter but it makes sense to plan ahead

If the debit card has a set fee to draw from an ATM then why not draw a large sum and pay for things in cash, that then dilutes the fee. With having a lot of relatives at the house in Spain this year there were a number of different bank accounts but my step son has a Santander account and he was always looking for a Santander branch because he said that any withdrawals from the branch did not incur the fee.

I use a mixture of debit and credit myself, my bank of Ireland card charges foreign transaction fees and the first trust debit card doesn't.