On Sep 14, 9:37*am, Roland Perry wrote:

I was surprised how much of a hard-sell I was given when picking up some
currency at a UK-based Travelex, they wanted to give it to me on a
pre-pay card rather than as cash. But the whole point of getting cash
(as ar as I'm concerned) is to bridge over that awkward moment between
landing and finding a suitable ATM, which quite often includes needing
money for taxis/trains etc to get you off the airport.

Exactly how I see it. I pretty much always use my debit card for
foreign currency these days. I can think of few reasons why I
wouldn't, subject to keeping an eye on my account for possible fraud
if travelling to any "dubious" locations. Yes, there is a fee, but
there's also a fee for using Travelex etc, it's more convenient using
a debit card, and the fee is not *that* high if you draw larger
amounts in one go.

I can see no benefit to using one of those pre-pay cards for me. The
only benefit I can see to anyone is those wishing to limit to a
holiday budget who don't feel they can manage this otherwise -
essentially the same people who won't use credit cards because they
might run up large amounts of borrowing, whereas I do use them for
ease of tracking spending, fraud protection and business expenses,
while always clearing them at the end of the month.

Neil