A brand-new fintech company which I was presented to earlier this year. Currensea Card In Greece…
It has won a couple of awards over recent months for what it does (offering you an inexpensive method to spend abroad) but what I like about is that it is basic as hell. This is an advantage.
is, efficiently, a direct debit travel card. It is a Mastercard which sits in between you and your existing bank account. There is nothing to top-up or prepay. You simply spend as you would on a normal debit card and the money is drawn from your bank account– just without the typical 3% charge.
Oh, and is complimentary to request, which likewise assists.
There are also some interesting travel advantages if you choose a paid strategy, however the free strategy works fine. You can use here.
There is a business design in fintech which Curve, Revolut, Monzo etc have all followed:
launch by doing something well, and for free or cheaper than the competitors
include a growing number of functions which your existing customers don’t truly require or desire
include charges, costs or constraints to the feature that made people get your item in the first place, eliminating any competitive advantage
is currently still in Stage 1 of this procedure and will hopefully remain there. Monzo, revolut and curve are currently in Stage 3 …
is easy enough that it passes my ‘Can you explain it to your mate in the bar in 30 seconds?’ test:
What countries can I use Currensea? Currensea Card In Greece
It is a free direct debit card to use abroad and which instantly charges all purchases to your existing bank account in Sterling, less a little 0.5% cost.
That’s it.
You don’t (yet …) earn any airline company miles or points for utilizing it.
Why would I want to get a card?
If you have a charge card offering 0% foreign exchange fees, then you don’t need a card, unless you want complimentary ATM withdrawals. You can stop reading now.
However, credit cards which use rewards and charge 0% FX charges are few and far between. The only ‘miles and points’ choices which provide a partial solution are the Virgin Atlantic credit cards which have 0% FX fees in the Euro zone.
IS perhaps for you if:
you do not have a credit card offering 0% FX charges and do not want to affect your credit report by getting another charge card specifically to use abroad
you want an item which enables you to make �,� 500 of foreign currency ATM withdrawals per month without any charges and only a very little FX mark-up (there is a little cost beyond �,� 500).
you desire a product for you, your adult kids, moms and dads, partner or anybody else in your life who needs a basic, easy to understand payment card that will conserve them cash when travelling.
How does operate in practice?
It is, as I said earlier, an extremely basic process. You utilize your Currensea card in the same way as your existing debit card.
You make your purchase in local currency (any currency, globally).
Your bank account bank instantly validates that you have adequate money in your account and authorises the transaction.
The transaction goes through at either the interbank rate or the Mastercard rate, depending upon the currency. adds a 0.5% fee if you have the free card. If you have one of their paid cards, there are no fees.
You get an automatic spend notification via the app, if you choose to install it.
The money is taken from your bank account a few days later.
Here is an example. With no foreign travel in the diary, I chose to splash out and purchase 1,000 MeliaRewards points for EUR5.
This is what you see in the Currensea app, which shows �,� 4.33 set up to leave my HSBC account a couple of days later:.
However converting pounds was expensive.
A pet peeve of mine is when ATMs forewarn you about the daylight robbery that is almost to occur (often in a various language) while not telling you about the inflated currency conversion charges happening in the background. Do not get me started. Anyway back to the positives for a bit anyway.
Thankfully in the last few years a handful of great travel debit cards have actually popped onto the scene … and like other terrific cards guarantees big cost savings (85%) and a fantastic app.
I believe the best bit might be what no other card does: links to your existing high street bank account.
What this implies is you can invest money you have in your existing current account with less stress over lacking cash and the extra action. That does not mean it is best.
In this Currensea review is the good, the bad, the ugly and the options, so that you can choose.
FX markup.
While our premium plans have no FX markup, we charge a small FX markup on our Necessary Strategy of 0.5% per deal, allowing us to make income from our Essential Strategy whilst staying much cheaper than other pre-paid cards and high-street debit cards. We likewise charge an FX markup on ATM use over the free quantity on all our strategies, complete information can be discovered on our prices plans.
Membership costs.
We charge an annual membership fee of �,� 25 for our Premium Plan, and �,� 120 for our Elite Plan. The subscription fee likewise removes all FX markup on deals.
Interchange.
Whenever you spend with your card we get a small % of the deal, known as interchange, this comes directly from the merchant and won’t be charged to you. Currensea Card In Greece