They used to say about the Camino that “cash is king” because few places took tarjetas. But the pandemic and technology changed that. Touchless was in. We had about €280 in cash from our last trip and now, after two weeks, that is getting low. The exchange rate, which becomes relevant later, in the rant part, is about $1.07 per euro.
We pay for just about everything with Apple Pay. It is very convenient and we have an easy way to look at a record of everything we spend. Our pizza dinner was one of the few meals that required cash.
Anyway, time to get more cash. We chose a bank ATM that doesn’t charge a fee. After you ask for an amount, in our case €300, they ask if you want them to convert it or have your home bank do it. I have blogged about this before also, always have your bank do it. They offered a rate of 0.8455 euros per dollar. Actually it has four more decimal places, presumably to give you some feeling of exactitude. A quick calculation revealed how bad this was. They wanted $354 for €300. I tapped the button for no conversion. Then they did something I had not seen before. They asked again, saying are you sure you don’t want us to convert it for you. You can count on our rate but you don’t know what kind of rate you bank might give you. I declined again. We got the cash and the email from the bank in about three seconds. They charged us $320 for €300, a little better than the rate of $1.07 that google said of the going rate. That was the highest markup I have seen on any cash machine.
You may have a surprise when you see your bank statement. Besides the conversion, where it looks like they may have made a small profit (buy/sell rate difference), they might have a separate percentage charge and a flat fee charge. Bank of America does this when we use our ATM card in Europe. The flat fee is $5.00 and they charge me 1% (from memory, think I got the percentage right). They don’t charge if we use a “partner bank.” Barclay’s in Britain [hard to find], Deutsche Bank in Germany, Scotia Bank in Canada, others in a few places.
I don’t think so. We have been doing this for ten years. We use Capital One cards which don’t have any foreign exchange fees. I always go through our expenses after the trip and the amount charged has never been different from the one stated in the email we get after the charge.
Related to that, you have the same choice every time you use a credit card. I always say “euros” as they are precessing the charge because it asks each time. I checked this morning when we paid our hotel bill and if we had chosen “convert to dollars” the rate would have been 1.11 dollars per euro. I chose euros and a few seconds later saw that Apple Pay had given us a rare a bit under 1.07. Plus it gave us 2% cash back immediately.
Capital One is giving you a good deal with no fee foreign ATM use. We also don’t use much cash, charging most everything, though we feel guilty about this for small purchases at mom and pop places. Our credit card has no transaction fees and we always charge in local currency.
We deliberately got the capital one debit card because of the no foreign exchange fees. We put money into the account before we leave and take it all out after we get back in the next year. It is less important now since we use so little cash. Back in 2013-2014 we would not use credit cards at all. We would get 300 euros cash every few days and pay for everything with that. When I made my expenses spreadsheet after we got back I would see all the charges and they would be a little different each time as the rates changed.
The exchange rate scam bothered me because I hate all these fees and other tricks to extract more money from you.