In this short article we outline the advantages and disadvantages of what we now consider to be the best travel cards.
There are several options when it comes to taking cash abroad: changing money at your own bank in your home country, changing money at the airport or at a bank when you arrive at your destination, or withdrawing money directly from an ATM.
In our experience, exchanging money either at your bank, a foreign branch or at the airport involves extra costs, is not always at the most beneficial exchange rate and is often accompanied by an additional interbank fee.
Credit cards
Withdrawing money from a cash machine with your national Visa card can also incur unexpected charges as your bank probably does not have agreements with other banks abroad. We experienced this situation a few years ago in Colombia and had a hard time recovering the money.
There are several commission-free travel cards on the market, this time we will talk about two of them, Vivid and Revolut. In our experience, the combination of these two cards is the one that best suits our way of travelling. But as this is very personal, we will tell you the advantages and disadvantages of each of them so that you can choose the one you think is best.
Credit cards
Vivid
The Vivid app (VISA card) offers several plans, in this case premium and standard.
The standard plan is free and you can withdraw up to 200 €/month from the ATM without commissions (minimum €50). The physical card is free as long as you deposit a minimum of 100€ at the time of registration, which you can spend with your virtual card until you receive the physical card, which takes a week to arrive at your home address.
The premium plan is paid, 9.90€/month, you can withdraw a maximum of 1,000€/month without commissions (minimum €50) plus other advantages such as a cashback rewards programme. With this plan, there is no penalty for unsubscribing, so it can be interesting to have the possibility of having more cash available through the ATM.
The first time you join this plan you get one month free, but remember to unsubscribe so that you are not charged for the following months.
Regardless of the plan you choose, to be able to make payments with other currencies you have to generate different pocktes for each currency within the app. Topping up can be done through your credit card or by bank transfer. It is important that you take this into account because if you want to pay with a pocket that does not have enough credit, even if you have another pocket with credit in another currency, it will tell you that you have insufficient credit and will not let you make the payment. The same thing will happen with cash withdrawals from the ATM.
Credit cards
Revolut
This is one of the best cards on the market for commission-free travel.
With its standard version (it's free) you can withdraw up to €200 a month at ATMs without commissions, minimum 50€ per transaction. If you exceed the limit, there is a fee of between 1.5 and 2% of the amount of the withdrawal. It is VISA or Mastercard depending on the country, availability...
If you request the physical card, it costs 6.99€ and takes a week to arrive at your home address.
You can create pockets within the app and change currency whenever you want without commissions. It gives you the current interbank interest rate so it is interesting to exchange money when the stock markets are open, because if you do it for example at the weekend it will apply an approximate exchange rate which is always less beneficial. Topping up can be done by credit card or by bank transfer.
However, if you do not create the pockets, the card works perfectly and applies the interest rate at the time of the transaction. So you can withdraw money and make payments as long as you have a balance, regardless of the currency.
You have other options for the configuration of the card that offer other features. The premium or plus options are fee-based, the cheapest being the plus option for 2.99€/month but you cannot withdraw more than 200€/month from the ATM without a fee (although you have other cashback benefits).
The premium option is more expensive, €7.99/month, and allows you to withdraw up to 400€/month from the ATM without commission. The problem is that when you want to switch from the premium version to the standard version you are charged a penalty almost equivalent to staying for a year of subscription.
That's why we recommend you have both cards (Vivid and Revolut), which complement each other perfectly and avoid unnecessary fees.
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