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I've got some money sent to me from US on a Citi Prepaid card. (Payment from Google for Google Summer of Code 2012.)

However, I live in Croatia, and the withdrawal fees ($3 per withdrawal, 3% for currency conversion) are far from insignificant. Since I have no plans on travelling to US any time soon, I'm interested in alternatives on how to withdraw the money losing as little of it as possible.

This question is somewhat related, but options for Croatia may differ compared to Australia (Australia is bound to have more options.)

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There is (at least) one service that allows you to convert USD, GBP and EUR at the interbank spot rate, and make purchases using a prepaid MasterCard in many more currencies (also at the interbank rate). They currently don't charge any fees (as of September 2015).

You could use your US prepaid card to fund your account with Revolut and then spend them in your local currency (HRK?) without fees (you can check the current USD/HRK rate with their currency calculator); you can also withdraw to non-EUR SEPA-enabled bank accounts, but then your bank would charge you for the necessary currency conversion (both by fees and their exchange rate).

If you have a bank account in EUR, you could alternatively convert your USD balance to EUR and then withdraw that to your EUR bank account.

If your US prepaid card has a corresponding bank account which can be used for ACH direct debit or domestic wire transfers (ask the issuer if you are unsure), TransferWise or a similar service might also be an option; they allow you to fund a transaction using one of those methods and then credit an account in

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  • As of 2021, with advent of new fintech services in Europe, the above is the best answer. That is: just top up a USD account and go on from that, saving money on debit card currency conversion fees. Revolut is a great EU option. Its IBAN USD account makes it easy to either use Revolut to convert at my own leisure, or transfer the money onwards directly, without conversion, towards the best provider. This, of course, assumes Revolut account can be opened in the first place, but the situation is WAY different than in 2012 when I originally asked the question.
    – Ivan Vučica
    Feb 11, 2021 at 16:53
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The best would be to spend the money in US dollars. Order something from eBay/Amazon, even for resale, or pay someone in the US for services that you don't care where they're coming from, etc.

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  • The eBay/Amazon quite a few items do not ship outside the US, few that ship charge a huge [rightly] shipping fee. So you tend to loose. A better option is to spend on non-shipable items, like software, games, application, ebook subscription etc that don't involve physical shipping
    – Dheer
    Jul 18, 2012 at 11:45

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