Travel money: the best cards to use overseas

All that’s left to do before going on holiday is to pop into your bank and pick up the foreign currency for your trip.

If you haven’t travelled offshore since the pandemic, this might be when you realise just how much things have changed when it comes to travel money.

Of New Zealand’s major banks, only Westpac now sells foreign currency to customers.

Meanwhile, two new travel money providers, Wise and Revolut, have disrupted the global currency exchange system.

We’ve found that the new players in the market might be your cheapest options.

What we did to find the cheapest way to access money offshore

To find the cheapest option, we compared the cost of accessing travel money via:

• Wise and Revolut travel cards
• debit and credit cards
• cash withdrawal
• traditional travel cards.

We based our survey on a month-long trip, visiting the United Kingdom, France and the United States, with a three-day stint in Australia on the way home. These trips were allocated £2,500, €1,000, USD$1,000 and AUD$1,000 respectively.

It’s always good to have some local currency in your pocket. For each country, we included one cash withdrawal to assess any fees for overseas withdrawals.

We assumed most people already have a debit or credit card so didn’t consider introductory offers or start-up costs for those options. We did include the start-up costs for travel cards and services like Wise or Revolut.

Most credit cards have extended interest-free periods, so we’ve assumed the bill for day-to-day spending has been paid off without incurring interest.