ATM cards

The information I've received from Cap One regarding my Hi-Yield Money Market Account is "no changes." Theri information page indicates no changes. Your Capital One account is still a Capital One account.

Start with local credit unions. CUs normally have very low or no fees for currency conversion.

Charles Schwab is still a "no fee" debit card. Also, as stated above, many credit union debit cards have this feature.

USAA has 1% foreign transaction fee. Also, there was a long post about Andrews Federal Credit Union which offers a debit card with an EMV chip and pin.

The Andrews FCU card is a credit card, not a debit card. But a chip isn't needed with debit cards anyway.

I'm also using USAA, $600 daily withdrawal limit and flat one percent on all foreign ATM's. You don't have to be military to use their banking services. You can usually match the 1% rate at other credit unions and local banks. There are a few free options but they come with deposit or other requirements that may or may not work for you. European banks don't add a fee but sometimes have lower withdrawal limits than your card allows. If you run into that and need more money, you can make more than one withdrawal in a day.

As someone said earlier, start by shopping your local credit unions. I use a small local one as my main financial institution, and they charge absolutely nothing.

My bad on the Andrews FCU thing ... just assumed they had a debit card with a chip. While you don't need a chip to use a debit card at an ATM, it is necessary if you want to use it at an automated kiosk. I have a debit card with an EMV chip issued by a UK bank; it is what I fall back on when I encounter an unmanned kiosk that won't take my American swipe card.

This thread made me wonder about something: do European ATMs read a chip as well as the magnetic stripe? I never thought of it before, because using my American debit card has always worked at banks in France, and only recently did I get a chip and PIN credit card because of increasing issues about the acceptance of stripe cards at machines in France. But what do Eurpean debit cards have: just a chip, or a chip and a stripe? And if just a chip, is it possible that European bank machines will start to switch over to chip only? Or is the security issue different than with credit cards so that that won't be the case? Anyone have any insights?

European cards have both a magnetic strip and an EMV chip. At least, my cards issued by European banks have both. Europeans travel to places where the chip is not used and thus they need the strip. Europeans experience similar self-service issues when they come to the States. Ever been asked to enter your zipcode in a gas pump for verification? This is a problem for Europeans. This secondary authentication is one of the reasons that the U.S. did not jump on chip and pin so quickly. Both Visa and Mastercard have announced their "roadmaps" for the U.S. for rolling out EMV chip capability ... so it is likely that more and more cards will start to be issued with a chip. www.mastercard.us/mchip-emv.html www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/visa-announces-plans-to-accelerate-chip-migration-and-adoption-of-mobile-payments-127297418.html

Just got back from a trip to Italy. My TD Bank checking account debit card worked fine in ATMs, and they don't charge a foreign transaction fee (for ATMs or point-of-sale, using it as a credit card).

I just returned from 2 weeks in Austria and Italy. I only used a credit card to pay for the hotel rooms. I used cash for everything else. I withdrew 150-250 euro at a time from the ATMs using a Schwab Visa Debit Card. The ONLY ATM fee charged the entire trip was by using a Chase bank ATM at the connecting airport in Dallas! And Schwab is crediting my account for the $3. I calculated the exchange rate and it is the interbank rate as found on XE.com and other places.