The best option for travelers when leaving the country is to order travel money online. When you’re out of your country of origin, you usually aren’t able to use the currency you’re used to using. The most used currency in the world is the USD but that doesn’t mean it’s accepted everywhere. Following close behind the USD is the euro, but still, that isn’t accepted everywhere either. Don’t worry though - it’s easy to get your money exchanged. Here are some of the best money tips for traveling.
1) Make sure you have enough of it. There’s nothing worse than traveling half way around the globe and realizing you’re short. If you don’t have a backup plan then you can see how disastrous this situation could turn out to be.
2) On the flip side of that, you don’t want to run around with all of your credit cards with you to use as your backup plan. The potential harm could be devastating. Just imagine if someone took that from your pocket or if you dropped it. A complete stranger would then have your credit card with access to who knows how much, and they could potentially steal your identity.
3) Taking a big wad of your own currency to a foreign country isn’t going to do you a whole lot of good. Every country has their own type of currency and if you don’t have it to offer for purchases, you’re out of luck. Additionally, if you dropped that wad of money, it probably wouldn’t be recovered anyhow.
4) Order travel money online. If you do this you’ll be doing yourself a great favor and saving yourself a whole lot of hardship. It saves you from having to exchange it later and you’ll be able to concentrate on other things rather than money.
5) When you order online, don’t pay too much. There are a lot of businesses that offer to exchange your money online but they aren’t all the same. Some places take advantage of consumers by charging larger amounts of money for their services. Some of these companies will even deceive you by advertising to exchange your money for free. Be aware of these companies because it’s not true. They hide their fees elsewhere in order to make their profit.
6) Use a reputable company to order travel money online. This way you’ll be sure to get what you paid for and nothing less. There are a lot of scammers out there. FairFX give you a quality service and great exchange rates on travel money.
Wednesday 03 March 2010, 02:02pm
When traveling to a country that uses a different currency than you do, you have some decisions to make. You can take your American dollars to China, for example, and hope that every shop, restaurant and all other businesses accept your currency. Some may not. It would be horrible to be stuck in a situation abroad where you had no money because you couldn't find anyone to take the currency you brought with you. For this reason, it's smart to convert your money to whatever currency you'll need for wherever you're going.
There are several ways to go about this. You can either carry your accustomed currency with you and hope to change it over there, you can change it over here and take it with you, or you can purchase a prepaid currency card online.
Taking it With You
If you decide to take all of your accustomed currency with you, you have the chance of being taken advantage of. Let's say you walk into a shop that converts your currency, American Dollars for example, into Euros, or whatever other currency is used in the country you're visiting. The person across the counter may not speak English very well and therefore you may have a language barrier; which could result in the person shorting you money. Or the shop keeper could be unscrupulous and would gladly rob a foreigner. Unfortunately, the latter happens all the time.
Changing it Here
You can change your money here and then take it with you but there are some drawbacks to that, as well. For one, and this goes for the above example also, you could get robbed. Holding all that cash, and then pulling it out every time you want to make a purchase, can leave you vulnerable to thieves. And it's very common for foreigners to go to a country they're not familiar with and just pull out a stack of bills whenever they want to buy something because they have no idea how much to use. That's just what thieves want, for you to pull out a bunch of bills so they can take them from you.
Prepaid Currency Card
Now, consider if you could purchase currency online. Imagine not having to travel with all those bills. And think of what it would be like to be able to swipe a card, just as you do here, with the currency you need being used in the transaction. This is what you can have with a prepaid currency card. When you purchase currency online, your transaction is safe. You can get your card in the mail and then you can fill it up whenever you need more using your own currency's cards or bank accounts. Using prepaid currency cards, or purchasing currency online, is the only way to travel safely, securely and with the money you need to have the vacation of a lifetime. Have a look at our prepaid card today.
Wednesday 03 March 2010, 09:17am
In 2002 currency Euros became the official currency for the European Union. The euro is known as the most often traded currency, coming in second only to the U.S. dollar. Euros are one of the most important currencies in the world as they are used by 329 million people worldwide.
With the second highest value of banknotes and coins in circulation combined, the Euro only comes second to the U.S.. The states known as the Eurozone include: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Germany, Luxembourg, Greece, Malta, Portugal, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Span and Slovenian. These places combined make up the second largest economy in the world. You can easily use the euro in any of these places.
Currency Euros have been widely adopted making it much easier to travel throughout the continent. As if travelling isn’t difficult enough, add to it the need to exchange from sterling (and the difficulty around this alone), and then if you leave that country, you’ll have to do that once again. It’s not ideal and frankly, it can be a pain in the rear end. That’s why using Euros has made travelling so much better for tourists or anyone else for that matter. Since the euro is so widely accepted, you can travel to many places and still have the convenience of using the same currency for each place. Though American dollars used to be highly preferred to other currencies in countries that are members of the EEU, that’s not necessarily the case anymore. If you’ve done any travelling lately, or are planning to in the near future, you’ll quickly realize that many vendors will request that you pay them in currency Euros.
It’s interesting too that even in countries which have not become members of the EEU (and therefore do not use the euro as their official currency) the euro has become the preferred method of payment.
It may sound a little confusing, thinking about having to convert money when travelling. Even if you don’t quite understand the process or why we have to, it can still be made simple so that you can get what you need and get on with your trip. With the start up of online currency exchange businesses, it’s easier than ever to exchange your money for a reasonable rate. Click below to see how reasonable our rates are when buying euros.
Tuesday 02 March 2010, 05:28pm
