Used to use USAA bank for non-US ATM withdrawals. They had a great deal - regular commercial exchange rate, no fees, and five transactions per month they reimbursed you for the ATM owning bank's fees.
But no more, now fees and capped kickbacks. Had to use Chase last summer in Europe and it wasn't great.
Anybody know of banks with favorable foreign ATM policies like USAA used to have?
Thank you!
Charles Schwab Investor Checking. You also have to open an investment account, but you don’t have to fund the investment account. It can have a balance of zero. No foreign transaction fees and no ATM fees worldwide. Reimbursement of any fees charged by others.
Sweet Carol thanks.
We're in Fidelity with our personal finances, so maybe I'll check that card's benefits - they tend to benchmark to Schwab to an extent.
I definitely will close my USAA account and open a Schwab account if need be 😊
We do our banking at a credit union. If we use banks/credit unions affiliated with our credit union, we do not pay ATM fees. The back of our card has the symbols that we look for in Europe. We always use ATMs at banks or credit unions, preferably during bank hours. Every now and then we do a check of our local banking options and always determine that our credit union has the best terms for us. We do have a small account at Wells Fargo that we used to use for travel. I do know that I can withdraw money with my Wells Fargo ATM card and again, if we look for banks affiliated with Wells Fargo, there is no withdrawal fee. Other than that, I am not a huge Wells Fargo fan.
Check Fidelity, like you said they tend to keep up with Schwab, the other popular one in Capital One 360.
Credit Unions also offer good ATM cards, but we went with Schwab because our Credit Union maintained a very low daily limit, was much more finicky about out of country use (I do not even notify Schwab when I travel), and Schwab reimburses you if you do wind up paying a use fee.
Of course cash seems to be going the way of Travelers Checks, I think I took out 250 euro during an Italy trip in September, after 3 weeks, I was using it just to get rid of it. You may want to review your credit cards and make sure you have one or two no transaction fee, contactless capable cards. You can use those for even purchases of a few euro in most places.
I also belong to the United Nations Federal Credit Union (UNFCU), they offer a decent ATM card deal, but I use them for their credit card, one of the very rare US based PIN priority cards.
Citibank has no fees and my credit union does not charge atm fees.
Fidelity charges 1% of transactions that you sign for. But no fees on ATM withdrawals, and rebates foreign ATM fees. It's the same as Schwab for withdrawing cash, 1% on non-pin purchases. This works for us as we use a Chase Sapphire Visa for purchases.
"Charles Schwab Bank doesn't charge a fee when you use its debit card at an ATM overseas. In fact, it offers unlimited reimbursements for ATM fees from cash withdrawals worldwide, regardless of the network used. And it doesn't charge currency conversion fees for debit card transactions.
I do think I still will open a Schwab account. I like having two good options for withdrawing cash, particularly since since Fidelity has a $500 daily limit. I generally don't go over that, but it's nice too have the option to access a lot of cash if necessary.
You've got to be careful: "no ATM fees" doesn't mean "no currency conversion fee," nor "we reimburse foreign ATM's fees." Many banks and credit unions that advertise no ATM fees aren't giving you the most favorable conversion rate too.
Lastly some of the cards listed in replies above are balance dependent, requiring high balanced in at minimum linked investment accounts, some in the checking account itself.
Just a word on the "1%" it causes some arguments on here, but the card processor (Plus, MC, Visa) will convert the currency and charge a fee. It is actually two fees, a flat transaction fee and a % of transaction currency conversion fee. For all of the major processors, this amounts to ~1%. In my tracking, the transaction occurs favorable to the published Interbank Rate you see online. Even to the point that transactions I tracked in the past seem to have gone through at less than Interbank, sometimes up to 1% over Interbank, but usually less than 1% from Interbank.
The card issuer can also charge a fee, and must disclose it, I guess I would wonder if Fidelity's 1% is the Card processor fee or an added fee, I assume the Processor fee. While Schwab does not charge any fees, it appears to me that the 1% processing fee is just in the transaction, but like I said, since you do not know what rate the processor received, it is so small it is hard to tell and not worth arguing about. Bottom line, probably no difference between Schwab and Fidelity.
And to your point, if you accept DCC, Schwab will not offer any reimbursement.
Paul is correct. The discussion of fees can get very complicated depending on definitions. ---- advertise no ATM fees aren't giving you the most favorable conversion rate too...... That is a slight incorrect statement. Assuming you are using either the PLUS or Cirrus networks, the conversion rate will be exactly the same whether you are using a credit or debit card at that point in time. Thirty minutes later could be slightly different. It is the networks that establish the exchange (conversion) rate and not the card issuer. After that, any fees added will be added by the card issuer or a user fee by the owner of the ATM.
To expand on Frank's comment, at the ATM, before you commit to the transaction, it will display any fees and the conversion rate. You can decide if you want to continue the transaction. Do not expect to see the exchange rate from the money markets you see on the internet, but it shouldn't be a huge difference. Sometimes you may be in a hurry or do not see multiple ATM and it may be worth it to you to just get the cash. You are on vacation.
We use Schwab for cash advances on the Plus network, and the Chase Sapphire card for purchases. We have never had an issue with Chase - we have several Chase cards, and they are very helpful. The Sapphire card has a $99 annual fee, but service is excellent, and they have been generous in forgiving costs for transactions.
In our upcoming trip, we will probably change smaller amounts, as I understand many formerly cash transactions are now done as tap-n-pay transactions. I have g-pay, and will use that.
Regarding the Chase Sapphire cards, ours is the Reserve designation. I agree that they're fabulous travel cards, although the Reserve has gotten a lot more expensive lately, probably not worth it's added benefits anymore unless you travel a lot and take full advantage of the extra perks.
I'm probably going to downgrade to the $99 card.
I need to check if the $99 card serves as primary (not secondary) insurance on rental cars like the Reserve card does.
I also really like that you get automatic standard travel insurance on everything travel you buy on the Sapphire card. We've actually used this a couple times over the past 10 years. Handy.
Did USAA recently change it's ATM fee policy? And I mean, as in the past 3 weeks? I was in Greece for 3 weeks and they paid ATM fees up to $15, which is the same as they pay while I'm in the States if I use one that's not part of its "network" of cooperating bank ATM?
Also, the exchange was nearly what I have on an app that tracks exchange rates. I simply declined the currency conversion and paid the $3.95 fee (4.14-4.18 euro) and took my cash.
When I returned home, all fees except one were rebated.
USAA rebates $15 in fees, takes 1% of total baked into exchange rate. After 10 transactions they start charging you $2 per.
About standard for an okay card. You can definitely do better.
This is the best article I could find:
https://www.finder.com/debit-card-best-to-use-overseas
What's up with USAA? I've had a banking/insurance relationship with them for decades but my last half-dozen experiences with them have been underwhelming (insuring a boat, insuring a condo, insuring an RV, buying a car, selling a car, etc.). They're super polite but they've become like most big banks - more focused on profit centers than helping their customers.
Now, I'm leaning toward Navy Federal Credit Union as my primary bank. I've had good, but relatively few, experiences with them.
TravelBoss--I have had USAA my entire life, first from my dad and then my husband. We have also had Navy Federal. We left NF when they messed up our checking account so bad and let checks go through that had stop payments on them. Now every last thing is through USAA and we have not had any bad or even mediocre experiences. One thing they did that went above and beyond was when we got money out of the ATM at the Copenhagen airport, it dispensed only a bit of Denmark currency, but the rest was Swedish. We did not notice, and went to use it to pay for dinner only to be told that was the incorrect currency. The exchange rate difference was huge, so we were out several hundred dollars. When we returned, I called USAA in hopes that they could get in touch with the ATM company to let them know and to be more careful. What USAA did though was they reimbursed us the exchange difference, without me asking. That was very nice and they certainly did not need to do it as it was not their mistake, but I sure appreciated it.
How do you know you are getting a good exchange rate? The exchange rate is separate from any fees you you may pay, so don’t account for that. Do you look up the exchange rate before you get money and then compare? What deviance from that would you rate as acceptable?
In essence you can only get what they give you. Any difference is usually negligible.
I think that getting a card with no ATM fees is good, but worrying about the exchange rate is worrying for nothing if you use a major bank card and then use ATMs from a major in country bank.
Re exchange rate, my cards state in their terms that they use the daily commercial rate published by the Fed, or a government mandated rate if legally required in the foreign country. I'm assuming this standard is passed through from the ATM network?
Regarding USAA, have had one bad experience (insurance) in a lifetime with them, the rest all good experiences. I also feel like they're becoming more generic and less specialized to military people, but if course this is to be expected as new generations of members expand their civilian presence.
So no beef w/ USAA at all, just neutrally nothing that their ATM card terms changed.
Yes to Schwab, used them in several French cities with no problem. They claim "high interest" and yes it's higher than your regular bank, but not by much.
And if you're going to be changing cards anyway, why not look into a chip and PIN card since that might resurface one day in Europe. I have a card from Andrews FCU for just that reason.
I have Charles Schwab card and happy with it. But when setting it up several years ago, I was unhappy with how long it took them to put my original money transfer in the account for me to use (days after it was deducted from my checking account). So don't set up too close to your trip departure date.
