Which bank card with free ATM use in the med and world wide

wazza said:
Over the world no, but within the EU forex bank doesn't charge for atm withdrawals..
According to their website:-
A bank card with no annual fee
A bank card that can be used all over the world
A bank card with no withdrawal fees within the EU

It's a Nordic bank, www.forex.se, all info is in English.
Hope this helps..
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Very poor exchange rates. Costs much more than some of those mentioned above with withdrawal fees.
 
Pre paid CaxtonFX. The rates are very competitive, better than the banks and P.O. All done on line, top up from anywhere either by phone or on line and no charges anywhere for anything after it's loaded.

There are other equally as good pre paid options but I've used Caxton for 5 years and never a problem.

They also offer electronic payments of large sums as well at very good rates.
 
Figures from my Nationwide Flex account statement today -

Cash withdrawal of €300 on 29 January 2013, exchange rate 1.168, fees £6.05 in total.

Nationwide Select credit card supermarket transaction of €40.94 on 23 March 2013, exchange rate 1.172, no fees

Exchange rates and costs seem pretty favourable to me.
 
I know a lot of non UK liveaboards reed these threads to, for them maybe of interest,

I have a Visa account with some credit on. All ATM withdraws cost 1,5 €, regardless the amount.
The card itself costs 36,5 € / year. Hearsay that a Visa positive account is not possible to open any more.

My wife has a DKB account. ( Deutsche Kreditbank ) Some credit. All free.

No fee for the card, no fee for withdraws, nothing.
 
Hi. We had banked with Nationwide for years and years until they took the free withdrawals away and offered "free" travel insurance which was useless to us. We opened a current account (all on-line) with Norwich & Peterborough around 2 years ago and its worked a treat. We have used our N&P debit cards in Europe, Turkey and in the USA with absolutely no problems and an excellent exchange rate free of charge. I do make a quick phonecall to them to notify of our intention to be abroad. Would recommend this account if you are away from the UK a lot.
 
Hi,
I also use the N&P (Norwich & Peterborough) debit card which offers free ATM withdrawals worldwide. It is a condition of this account that you top it up by at least £500/month. However, you don't have to keep a £500 balance.
 
dcr said:
For the record our experience of Santander Zero is that you will pay a % handling charge from Visa when you use the card to purchase goods and a standing %, that I cannot recall, when you use non Santander ATM's. Santander claim not to charge any fees, but they do pass on local and Visa charges so their claim of "no fees" appears to be only half true at best. We complained about this last year on the grounds of them giving us misleading information when we set up the account and they "awarded" us with a £25 payment into our account with receiving any agreement to accept it from us. We decided to drop the issue as we were unlikely to be successful.
Now on looking into their 123 account I see that in the supporting literature they are still claiming that they do not charge any fees! Misleading at least I would think, unless someone else knows better?
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To avoid you misleading others - I have a Santander Zero card - it definitely charges nothing for having one and gives Mastercard rates with no handling fee.
However, it's only available to those with £10k in their savings a/c or with their mortgage with Santander. I got mine through the back door because of being a shareholder.
I use it only occasionally, mainly because their website is a pain to use. It's not worth trying to draw cash through it - even if your ac is in credit, they still charge 1 month @ (from memory 23% pa).
Having done the sums - and allowing for the drag with Mastercard and Visa exchange rates - all the FX cards cost money, between 4-8%, and most UK banks are utterly usurious on cash withdrawals, even Nationwide on a nominal 1.503% are charging, after taking into account the Visa rake-off about 2.8% compared to money-market rates.
The Santander 123 account charges a hefty monthly fee and you'd have to move a lot of payments through it to get your monthly fee back again.
I'm afraid the banks have bigger, faster computers than us, are intent on making money out of changing currency and have no intention of doing ANYTHING for nothing. All you can do is settle for the least greedy thief - but don't believe their offers, it's the hidden charges that you've got to dig out.
 
Well some reading and working out what to do will be done from all your fab info.
Im with Nationwide and santandare at the mo, so will have to go with them to see whats best,
Thanks all for your input,,,,,,,roll on november now for us to break away,,,,woo woo
 
charles_reed said:
To avoid you misleading others - I have a Santander Zero card - it definitely charges nothing for having one and gives Mastercard rates with no handling fee.
However, it's only available to those with £10k in their savings a/c or with their mortgage with Santander. I got mine through the back door because of being a shareholder.
I use it only occasionally, mainly because their website is a pain to use. It's not worth trying to draw cash through it - even if your ac is in credit, they still charge 1 month @ (from memory 23% pa).
Having done the sums - and allowing for the drag with Mastercard and Visa exchange rates - all the FX cards cost money, between 4-8%, and most UK banks are utterly usurious on cash withdrawals, even Nationwide on a nominal 1.503% are charging, after taking into account the Visa rake-off about 2.8% compared to money-market rates.
The Santander 123 account charges a hefty monthly fee and you'd have to move a lot of payments through it to get your monthly fee back again.
I'm afraid the banks have bigger, faster computers than us, are intent on making money out of changing currency and have no intention of doing ANYTHING for nothing. All you can do is settle for the least greedy thief - but don't believe their offers, it's the hidden charges that you've got to dig out.
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Charles - I also have a Santander Zero a/c and use it's DEBIT Visa card to draw out euros from ATMs. Like many used to use Nationwide Flex for this until the charges came on but still use Flex outside eurozone for better rates. For comparative purposes a few years ago took out 100 euros on each card from a general ATM in Paris - my statements showed the Zero card cost less.Must say I find the website OK and can easily move money from other a/cs to top up the Zero using my Ipad.
Would appreciate further comment from others ref.hidden charges etc.
 
We are existing Nationwide Flex account customers.

We have been looking at the Nationwide Flex Plus account because where we are (Central America), the FairFX, Caxton cards types of card are of little benefit.

Although the Flex Plus account costs £10 per month, if it is used as the card to withdraw money from the ATM, it does not take long to negate the £10 monthly account charge compared with what we are charged every time we use our existing Nationwide Flex account debit cards for cash withdrawals (approx. £4.50 every £170 withdrawal).

The rest of the benefits offered with the Flex Plus account are of very little use to us.

Have we missed something?
 
john_q said:
We are existing Nationwide Flex account customers.

We have been looking at the Nationwide Flex Plus account because where we are (Central America), the FairFX, Caxton cards types of card are of little benefit.

Although the Flex Plus account costs £10 per month, if it is used as the card to withdraw money from the ATM, it does not take long to negate the £10 monthly account charge compared with what we are charged every time we use our existing Nationwide Flex account debit cards for cash withdrawals (approx. £4.50 every £170 withdrawal).

The rest of the benefits offered with the Flex Plus account are of very little use to us.

Have we missed something?
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Don't think so. Good thing is there is no minimum monthly deposit requirement. Also you will get 3% AER (2.96% Gross) interest on in-credit balances up to £2500 which, assuming you keep that as a min balance, should give you around £75 PA interest pre tax which will go some way to covering the £120 PA cost of maintaining the account.
 
Just a quick update on the Halifax Clarity Card.

Firstly on purchases we're getting between 1.167 and 1.187 with no other charges.

We did an experiment taking out 100 Euros in cash using Cardo's card (his has a 12% interest rate, while I got a 17% one for some reason - not a problem for purchases but matters for cash). It cost £85.03, and another 90p in interest for the month before we paid it off. No other charges. That makes the total rate 1.163 which is far better than I can find on any other service.
 
My son (www.capersofcapers.co.uk) has just gone round the world with a Halifax credit card for payments and a N&P debit card for cash withdrawals. No charges and fairly competitive rates on both.

I have a HSBC.fr current account with Carte Bleu for cash withdrawals and payments but also carry a Nationwide credit card for the unexpected which is also fee free.

Tony
 
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