While travellers cheques were the most popular and secure way to purchase foreign money for a trip in the distant past, they are quickly becoming outdated. As the prepaid traveler's card picks up in popularity, more people understand that there are benefits to ditching the cheques once and for all.
Competitive Exchange Rates
When you buy traveller cheques for a trip, you often get the most unreasonable and unfair exchange rates imaginable. If you are exchanging through your bank then you may feel that there are no safe alternatives, and in years in the past that was pretty much the truth. There weren't any secure options for taking large sums of traveling money with you in the past, but today the prepaid cards are giving you a very affordable alternative.
With a prepaid card you can go online and essentially shop around for the lowest exchange rates! You don't have to go with whatever some banker decides to give you on any given day and if you put enough money on your card to last you through your entire trip you won't have to worry about getting even higher exchange rates when you need to purchase more money from foreign banks while on vacation.
When you place money on a prepaid card you are locking in the exchange rate at that time, so there is no questioning how much money you have on the card at any point on your trip.
Increased Security
Travellers cheques do make some people feel secure, but the fact is that they are being accepted by fewer and fewer establishments around the world. This makes it very difficult to get them cashed and you usually end up in some foreign bank trying to get local currency for your travellers cheques. Everyone used to do this in the name of security, but prepaid cards are far more secure than those travellers cheques every hoped to be!
Most prepaid travel money cards will allow you to have your card and money replaced if it is lost. Try going to any bank that has issued you travellers cheques in the past and ask them to refund your cheque because you lost the first one and see how far you will get! Most will not help you without substantial fees, if at all.
Holding all of your travel money on one discreet card is also much easier to keep up with than trying to manage a wallet packed full of local currency notes. You will need some local currency with you of course, but the bulk of your money should be secured on a prepaid card.
Try out a FairFX Currency Card today, and see how much less you could pay when going abroad.
Tuesday 13 April 2010, 09:10am
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