Capital One card

DO NOT use a credit card to withdraw cash from an ATM. Use only a debit card otherwise the fees are very high. Depending on which Capital One credit card you have, there is no currency exchange applied to credit purchases made with the CO credit card. I also believe that is true for the CO debit card but you need to double check with the issuer. Those are two different cards.

Are you asking about the credit card, or about opening an online bank account and using an ATM card? Do NOT use a credit card for withdrawals from an ATM. Otherwise, I'm not sure what there is to "expand". You pay no foreign conversion fees with either card. Capital One charges no fees for using an ATM card in any ATM, and refunds the first $10 (maybe $25) of any fees charged by a foreign ATM.

No foreign transaction fees - the 1 to 3% that is added to whatever you charge by some credit card companies. This only applies to amounts charged. I wouldn't use a Capital One credit card to withdraw funds. Those are cash advances and have different types of fees. I assume you're talking about your credit card and not a debit card.

Exactly as you stated. Hi-Yield Monet Market Account. No fees. Min Balance is something like $1. They charge no ATM fee, and supposed to cover any ATM fee you run into, but European ATMs owned by banks do not charge fees (and we do not use it here, we use our regular bank and network). We just returned from using this with no problem in Budapest and Krakow. I just calculated the rate, it's at the interbank rate, we lost roughly 0.85% on the exchange.
Nite that when you set this u, it will take 30 days for the first transfer to go through. After that, transfers seem to take about 6 business days to hit. You can set up on-line on CapOne to transfer funds from whatever account you designate elsewhere. And BTW - CapOne also offers a no-fee MasterdCard, and they do NOT charge any fee for foreign usage like most of the credit cards do. The card also has 1% cash back on everything, 2% on gas and grocery stores.

Go to the website, you will see an option for "Online Banking" and that is the one you want (not the Credit Card option, otherwise Frank might have a coronary). Open the account and deposit some money. You get the debit card in about a week. I downloaded the CO app for my iphone so I could check balances as I traveled (wifi of course). Works great.

One caveat about the Capital One credit cards. Every time we travel to Europe, both of us dutifully call and notify them of all the countries we will be visiting and when. The cards (we each have our own account) work perfectly in the first country we visit. We move on to the next country and always find that the cards are now blocked, even though we have not made any unusual purchases and still have plenty of credit available. We end up having to call them AGAIN which can become very time-consuming.

I did not have the problem Cynthia reports. I told them what countries I would be in and the card worked with no problems in all of them. An additional service they provide is an automatic notification of a foreign transaction every time the card is used outside the US. This allows you to immediately be aware if someone has hijacked your number.

I haven't had problems with the card being refused either. My problem is that you can only notify Cap One of foreign travel for up to 60 days, if you're on a longer trip you have to call from abroad with the update. Of course, Skype does help with that - collect calls actually work with Skype.

Well I already have a capital one high yield MMA. So I guess it would be as easy as calling them up to get the debit card tied to my account. Thanks everyone!

I just got back from Europe and used my Cap One credit card only for hotels. Everything else I used my Cap one debit card tied to my MM account at ATMs for cash. It worked beautifully. Also I set up alerts via my email for both cards letting me know everytime the balance changed or the card was used. That way every morning I just checked my emails at the hotel and was able to monitor the cards incase of any unauthorized usage. Called Cap one ahead of time to let them know my itinerary and that was it. I am keeping my MM account open for travel in the future since it worked so well.

I notify Capital One (both cc and ATM) by email through their websites before I travel and haven't had a problem in the last couple of years. Most of my trips are multi-country. I would think email would work on extended trips just as well.