{"id":177,"date":"2024-03-22T08:36:46","date_gmt":"2024-03-22T08:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/holiday-abroad.com\/?p=177"},"modified":"2024-03-22T08:43:31","modified_gmt":"2024-03-22T08:43:31","slug":"the-benefits-of-paying-in-local-currency-using-no-fee-bank-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/holiday-abroad.com\/?p=177","title":{"rendered":"The benefits of paying in local currency using no-fee bank cards"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"177\" class=\"elementor elementor-177\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-5d960ee e-flex e-con-boxed e-con e-parent\" data-id=\"5d960ee\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-core-v316-plus=\"true\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"e-con-inner\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-f5abab7 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"f5abab7\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t<style>\/*! elementor - v3.20.0 - 11-03-2024 *\/\n.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-stacked .elementor-drop-cap{background-color:#69727d;color:#fff}.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-framed .elementor-drop-cap{color:#69727d;border:3px solid;background-color:transparent}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap{margin-top:8px}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap-letter{width:1em;height:1em}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap{float:left;text-align:center;line-height:1;font-size:50px}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap-letter{display:inline-block}<\/style>\t\t\t\t<p>This is a quick post to make you aware of the benefits of paying in the local currency<br \/>of your chosen holiday destination abroad using a specialist bank card that offers<br \/>such a service without any extra fees or charges.<br \/>Currently, there are at least two online banks in the UK that offer this service \u2013<br \/>Monzo and Chase.<br \/>Both of these bank accounts are free to have and use unless you want to subscribe<br \/>for their premium accounts which are not discussed here. What they offer is a debit<br \/>card which can be used to pay in a different currency, truly without any fees and<br \/>charges, and at an exchange rate following very closely the one published by the<br \/>World Bank at the time of payment.<br \/>So what does that mean in real terms? Let\u2019s say that you are in Spain and you are<br \/>about to pay a restaurant bill of 100 euro. You can pay that with euro that you<br \/>exchanged for pounds sterling, or you can pay using your bank card. If you use a<br \/>normal bank card to pay the bill, you will be \u201chit\u201d twice by charges and fees. Firstly,<br \/>you will have a very unfavourable exchange rate as banks normally take a<br \/>commission every time they have to exchange currency in this way. Even if they say<br \/>they do not, they will use a rate that is good for them and not good for you. Secondly,<br \/>most banks have very strict rules about paying in foreign currency, and will probably<br \/>charge you a percentage of the transaction as a fee. And thirdly, some banks might<br \/>have a monthly charge applicable if your bank card had been used to pay in<br \/>currency, and this fee could be substantial. All this makes using normal bank cards<br \/>to pay abroad a very bad idea.<br \/>On the other hand, if you use Monzo or Chase, you will have none of these fees,<br \/>charges, and commissions. The whole point of these cards when they first started<br \/>was that you can pay in currency on very favourable terms. So you can be sure that<br \/>exchange rate used would be as close to the World Bank as possible, there won\u2019t be<br \/>any percentage fee for paying in foreign currency, and there won\u2019t be any fee at the<br \/>end of the month for using your card abroad.<br \/>In some instances, travellers have reported that the exchange rate had been even<br \/>better than that of the World Bank. This could have been due to delays in Monzo<br \/>updating their rates to match those of the World Bank. One traveller reported that,<br \/>while in Spain, they used their Monzo card to buy a mobile phone online and have it<br \/>delivered to their villa. They paid in euro, and what left their bank was \u00a3545. They<br \/>then checked the current exchange rate by going to Google and searching for \u201c599<br \/>euro to GBP\u201d and the result at the time was \u00a3550 euro. The exchange rate used by<br \/>Monzo at the time was so favourable to the traveller, that it saved them \u00a35 \u2013 which<br \/>never ever happens if you exchange currency at a change bureau or pay using<br \/>traditional bank cards. Unfortunately, it seems that in recent years Monzo have fixed<br \/>this glitch, and now you get a disclaimer under every transaction telling you an<br \/>approximate value in GBP and advising that the final value will be determined later.<\/p><p>This is presumably to allow for the exchange rate to update and settle. In any case,<br \/>the exchange rate is still outstanding.<br \/>Just a disclaimer \u2013 Monzo is not great for withdrawing cash out of an ATM abroad.<br \/>You get a relatively small fee-free amount, after which<strong> fees and charges<\/strong> would<br \/>apply. It is, therefore advised, to use your Monzo card to make card and online<br \/>payments instead of taking cash out of cash machines.<br \/>Another important note \u2013 a lot of card machines and transactions ask you if you want<br \/>to pay in GBP or in the local currency when you use your card. Always choose the<br \/>local currency. Otherwise, the card machine \/ website would use the merchant\u2019s<br \/>exchange rate, which is always very unfavourable for you and benefits them. If you<br \/>choose to do that, Monzo and Chase won\u2019t be any help at all and you will pay more.<br \/>Finally, it is worth mentioning that Monzo and Chase could be useful while you are<br \/>planning and booking your holiday abroad. If you are paying for hotels, flights, or<br \/>attractions or making restaurant <strong>deposits online<\/strong>, and there is an option to pay in the<br \/><strong>local currency<\/strong>, you can use Monzo or Chase and save a few quid.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a quick post to make you aware of the benefits of paying in the local currencyof your chosen holiday destination abroad using a specialist bank card that offerssuch a service without any extra fees or charges.Currently, there are at least two online banks in the UK that offer this service \u2013Monzo and Chase.Both [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,25],"tags":[28,29,27,26],"class_list":["post-177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance","category-payments","tag-bank-cards","tag-currency","tag-fees","tag-payments","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/holiday-abroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/holiday-abroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/holiday-abroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/holiday-abroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/holiday-abroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=177"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/holiday-abroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182,"href":"https:\/\/holiday-abroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions\/182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/holiday-abroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/holiday-abroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/holiday-abroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}