New answers tagged foreign-exchange
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Just back from Iceland where had my credit card was refused because of fraud protection on the purchase of a coffee and a cookie! Yes I notified the bank before we left home that we were going. Glad I had spent $7.50 and got some Icelandic Krona delivered to our house before we left!
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This depends on which country you are from and where you are going. E.g. changing Mongolisn currency (cash) into Euros or vice versa is cheaper in Mongolia than in Europe. If you travel from Europe to Mongolia, it is cheaper to exchange the money in your destination country. If you travel the other direction, it is not.
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I'm not sure you can generalize this. Even getting Euros varies from country to country. I got a very fair rate (in comparison to the wholesale rate) at ATMs in Ireland, and about 5% worse in Portugal (forced conversion at an unfavorable rate). Spain allowed my bank to convert but imposed a relatively high fee of a few Euros on each withdrawal. And that's ...
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It is probably inefficient to buy foreign currency at home to cover the standard big expenses of travel, but it can be incredibly useful to have a small amount of local currency to cover things like buying a bottle of water or an amazing souvenir from a street vendor or a merchant you don't trust with your credit card, making a small donation at a religious ...
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Another way to look at it: For you to buy foreign currency locally, it would first need to be transported from its original country all they to your local exchange place. When you use an ATM in the original country, that supply line is unneeded, meaning costs are lower.
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I frequently travel abroad. Depending how often I am (and my ties to a particular country) I handle money when I get there in any of the following ways:
In some countries I have a local bank, so I can perform some local transactions (particularly withdrawing cash from an ATM) in local currency. I can transfer money to those accounts ahead of time if I ...
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Getting the physical money in places where you can pay with them is nearly always advantageous. You would, through the exchange rate, pay for the additional transport, storage etc. of the physical currency otherwise.
Before travelling, you can check through the internet for ATMs in the destination airport arrivals area. Most airports have ATMs after customs....
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No, it's not - at least not in Europe.
Suppose you have 3000GBP in your bank account that you wish to use for a lovely trip to Europe. I'll use today's rates (07/11/19, 13:30GMT) for this example.
The interbank rate is at 1.11499. I see three options:
Withdraw cash in the UK, exchange cash directly either at home or at the destination: the worst idea. ...
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To give a slightly fatuous but technically correct answer:
Is it more economic to pre-purchase currency before travel, or use ATM cards / credit cards when abroad?
If you find yourself somewhere that only takes cash (and pace the comment you quote, even in 2019 (!) such places do still exist), then all your fancy plastic and electronics gets you a ...
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I don't know about other markets, but for travellers based in the UK going to popular destinations, the most competitive card providers give slightly better value than the most competitive cash providers.
Both cash and card processors can charge you money for the service of converting currency in three ways:
A fixed fee per transaction.
A percentage ...
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You don't need to be an economist to shop something. I just did some quoting of USD to EUR
The daily wholesale close: 1.1251
The daily rate from Visa: 1.121988
The quote from my brick and mortar bank: 1.1794
The quote from the Travelex to pick up at my local international airport: 1.2335
For starters, you don't get the wholesale price in a retail setting (...
4
On April 10th of this year, I paid for a hotel in Ireland with my credit card issued by a well known issuer (and advertiser) of "no foreign transaction fee" credit cards. The hotel cost €241.20 and my issuer converted that to $272.31, an exchange rate of 1.1290. XE's sister site X-Rates reports that the exchange rate on that day was 1.1267. So I got a ...
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In the US I have a credit card that offers purchases with no foreign transaction fee (otherwise typically 3%) and does not have an annual fee.
Being a MasterCard, the foreign exchange is done at the MasterCard rate (published on their web site the following day). As the rate is the same whether it is a conversion to or from the currency means there is no ...
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I think you're comparing apple and oranges a little bit.
XE is just showing you "mid-market" rates (half way between the bid and ask rates) and even has a disclaimer:
All figures are live mid-market rates, which are not available to consumers and are for informational purposes only.
In reality, all wholesale market FX transactions have a bid/ask spread ...
1
As written, your question reads a bit like a "shopping list" polling question, which is effectively off topic per site guidelines. I don't have a direct answer in terms of "does such a card exist" - but I can frame-challenge the assertion your question seems to be based on:
Arguably, a card provider could get 100% of their income from interest and ...
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The Financial Services (Distance Marketing) Regulations 2004 say in Section 11:
Subject to paragraphs (2) and (3), regulation 9 does not confer on a
consumer a right to cancel a distance contract which is—
(a) a contract for a financial service where the price of that service
depends on fluctuations in the financial market outside the supplier’s
...
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Here are some people that will buy the currency, abide may not within the official exchange rate.
Informal Value transfer which the buyer and seller of the currency are secured by the traders. I.e. they only make the trade when there is a confirmed peer, which money traders can match a rate that gives them immediate profits. Volatile of Z$ make hoarding ...
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Perhaps this may be helpful to think of in terms other than currency.
It seems obvious that gold bullion is more valuable than rice. So, if you have some rice to sell, and get gold in return, it would seem that you've won out. You gave something less valuable and got something more so; the other person gave something valuable and got something less so.
...
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Price is everything. There is a price high enough that the best asset will be desired by no one, and a price low enough that the worst asset will be desired by everyone. If the price is constrained (e.g., by an official exchange rate), then there may indeed be no natural buyers. Governments that maintain unrealistic exchange rates for their currencies do ...
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US dollars facilitate transacting an almost incalculable number of goods and services in the US and other places.
Zimbabwe dollars facilitate transacting primarily within the local Zimbabwe economy.
Bitcoin can transact as an alternative to US dollars and some other local currencies sometimes.
Altcoins have no value as a currency.
A person can ...
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Anyone who wants to buy something from Zimbabwe or pay taxes in Zimbabwe will need to buy Zimbabwean dollars. A company in Zimbabwe that pays its workers in Zimbabwean dollars but sells products in US dollars will need to buy them too.
Because there is an existing economy in Zimbabwean dollars, one has to buy the currency to be part of it. If the economy ...
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Yes a dual citizen can open account at crypto exchanges using the non-prohibited ID.
At time of writing, crypto exchanges that are not operating as a financial institution (bank, broker dealer, organization legally defined as a financial institution) do not have to deal with FATCA requirements. And US citizens that only have balances of crypto assets on ...
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Financial institutions are subject to additional reporting requirements where they deal with U.S. persons (→ FATCA). Many institutions therefore decline potential customers that are U.S. persons, either because the effort is uneconomical or because they are not allowed by local laws to report that data to the U.S.
U.S. persons are not only U.S. citizens, ...
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