Comparing The Top 3 Currency Cards – The Best Form Of Travel Money

Currency cards are a relatively new phenomenon in the travel money marketplace. They essentially work like a regular debit card – although there is one significant difference – a currency card contains a different currency compared with the currency of your country of residence.

This means that if you’re based in the UK, then instead of having a card denominated in pounds sterling, the card would contain another currency like euros or dollars.

-- Currency card key benefits --

One of the key benefits of this is that when you spend your money, you won’t be subjected to any excessive currency exchange fees. There are lots of other benefits to owning a currency card – read on to find out!

-- Top 3 currency cards --

The following are what we believe to be the top 3 currency cards available in the market today:

1) The FairFX Currency Card

The FairFX currency card consistently ranks as the top euro and dollar currency card available to UK residents. This card charges just €1.50 or $2.00 for ATM withdrawals, and its currency exchange rates are consistently the best in the market.

2) The CaxtonFX Currency Card

CaxtonFX is another currency card provider which offers great exchange rates, albeit on average just slightly worse that FairFX. The only significant additional fee to bear in mind is the ATM fee which for CaxtonFX is €2.00 for the euro card or $3.00 for the dollar card.

3) The TorFX Currency Card

At the time of writing the Compare Currency Cards website ranks the TorFX euro and dollar cards just behind CaxtonFX. The ATM fee is the same as Caxton, and the exchange rates are close – we found them to be marginally worse than Caxton, but it’s important to check them out for yourselves before placing your order.

-- Much better than more traditional forms of travel money --

Whichever company you choose to go with for your travel money, we believe currency cards to be the best form or travel money – much better than exchanging your cash at a traditional currency booth, but also much better than most debit or credit cards.

We also feel that travellers cheques are on their way out. Why bother buying your currency at lower exchange rates and then having to carry about bit of paper? One of the reasons that paperless technology saves you money is that it doesn’t have as high overheads – and your plastic card can be reused over and over again.

-- Don’t have preconceptions about currency cards --

Whatever your preconception of prepaid cards, we’d advise you to think again. Traditional prepaid cards can be expensive to run, charging high loading fees. However, although currency cards use the same type of card technology, their fee structures tend to be extremely reasonable.

Good currency cards have no monthly fees, no loading charges and offer great exchange rates, so if you’re just thinking of ordering cash, using your existing debit card or getting travellers cheques then think again… currency cards are the future!

Hamish Thomas consults to Compare Currency Cards, which reviews currency card providers. Visit http://www.comparecurrencycards.com to review all the top currency cards today.