Debit, credit or prepaid card in third world countries?
 

What card do you use on your travels in third world countries?

I'm liking the idea of a prepaid card as it's not directly linked to my bank account, no ATM charges, low foreign exchange charges.

I use a pre-paid card which works well, they all seem to be Mastercard which means that I sometimes have to use my Visa bank card but not very often.

Not on a bike travel (yet) but I've tried Revolut in many third world countries and it works just fine. Easy to monitor and block from the phone app, you can order several cards and manage them all through the app, like hiding a spare card somewhere while freezing it in the app (so its useless if stolen).
TransferWise is similar I think. Revolut does Visa, TW is Mastercard, both debit cards.

My wife has Revolut card but it is not Visa but Mastercard. Other than that it works 99%. There were couple problems when she wanted to pay contactless for the city bus ticket here in the UK. But we are not third world country (well at least not until end of March) so this does not count :rolleyes3:

In my experience they all work well - until they don't work in a particular fuel pump, store, entire town or even an entire country .
AND first world countries can be more problematic than third world.
Which is why you really need to have 4 ways of paying for stuff - with cash in small bill US dollars being the 4th method.

Hi

There is a couple travelling in Southern Africa that give Starling Bank a good report. It uses a phone app that automatically messages you the amount withdrawn in local currency and Uk amounts. I'm told that it is free to withdraw anywhere in the world as well.

Our normal bank cards are already Maestro type (which usually works when Mastercard works). So it is important to get variation, that is why we have a Visa credit card. So usually both are accept, but yeah we always carry cash in local currency as well as US dollars as well. Euro is an alternative, not sure how well it would work in Africa.

But I loved the visa credit card for the two times I had to pay a huge amount in cash for shipping. Our normal bank cards were acting up, as in they hit the limit early.
With the visa cards I was able to withdraw a large amount. So yeah, you lose a couple of percent but if it allows me to arrange a large sum of cash quickly, then I'm okay with that.

What, more specifically is a large sum? Even my UBS card won’t let me do over 800€ a day in Europe at ATMs.

That is why you have several cards so you can get the daily limit out of each of them, and then do it again 24 hours later.
Typical shipping costs might be from $500 to $3000 depending on how big the vehicle is. Or you might have a major repair or new tyres to pay for and as happens in Bolivia, many businesses just won't take credit cards

And also the daily limit in many countries including some European countries let alone many in S America is VERY low eg $200 so it can take visiting several ATM's just to hit your banks daily limit. Then it is nice to have a wad of US paper money tucked away somewhere

Once it was something like 1400 euro and second time around 1800 euro. Wouldve never worked with the normal bank cards. With the Visa card no problem. Altough the ATMs may want you to withdraw it in two takes.

Charles Schwab Card
 

We use the Charles Schwab debit card when traveling from here in the US to Europe. We had no issues while in Austria, Czech Republic, and Germany. There are no international transaction fees, and no atm fees. Just wanted to throw that out there.

I carry three. One travel spending card that offers no transaction fee and good conversion rates.

Secondly a standard debit card from my main bank,

Thirdly a credit card for back up.

I keep them in different places in case I loose one or get mugged.

And I carry four cards, minimum: two debit cards and two credit cards. When I anticipate complexity (or on a long trip), three of each. There is nothing like having a debit card get eaten by an ATM at the beginning of a long holiday weekend to put the fear of god into you....unless it's having a credit card cancelled by a distant corporate office due to activity they view as suspicious.

Most of my cards have favorable terms for world travel. Some are better than others, so always read the fine print. One of each kind of card is always a MasterCard, since every so often Visa cards are not accepted, even in Africa.

I've never messed with pre-paid cards. Maybe I'm old and inflexible, but the advantages never seemed worth juggling and tracking another account. I do take steps to limit my exposure to theft or fraud while traveling, and I never, ever log into an account while on a trip--I once had the experience of logging in, then receiving a suspicious activity notification from my bank which resulted in the card being shut down. I view any text, phone, or internet activity as subject to security breaches--and yes, there are obvious steps I might take to render this less likely, but see the above re "old and inflexible."

I do always carry some cash in US dollars, for all the obvious reasons.

Hope that's helpful.

Mark

I also carry four cards. Two visa and two Mastercard. I'm currently travelling through West Africa and I have always been able to get cash from ATMs when one doesn't work for whatever reason.

My prepaid Mastercard gets most use and has worked in a lot of West African ATMs. I'm with Caxton. A nice feature is the option of a secondary card. I have this stashed on motorcycle for emergency use. Similar to Revolut, it has an app for loading cash etc.

i usually use a selection debit/credit cards but is there a new way on the horizon ? It is very early days but after a breakdown /repair at honda in Lisbon last year I enquired if they accepted Btc ,no (in portugese) but who knows in a couple of years ?

podcast if anyone interested
https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podca...k-with-bitcoin