Debit cards vs. Bank ATM card help requested

Beth,

This is how i see and understand the various cards.

Credit Card - just as the name applies. Its a "line of credit" in your name(s). You can set the credit limit to how you see fit. Its YOUR guarantee you will pay the balance off -hopefully sooner than later.

Debit Card - this is not a Credit Card, it taps into your savings/checking account directly and any "charge" will be deducted IMMEDIATELY (whatever the institution considers). So, depending on how much $$ you have in your account, thats your limit. If you have a "debit card" it should say so.

You may want to have a chat with the bank/credit union you have your cards with so that you can get it straight from the horses mouth instead of us telling you what you have and guessing.

Just so you know, my credit card is linked to may savings/checking account. So when i w/d money i can do a "cash advance", or w/d $$ from my savings OR checking. Note, doing a Cash Advance is expensive since its pulling $$ out as if its a credit purchase. Also note that during all of my travels so far i have not been able to pull $$ out of my checking or savings, only been able to do "cash advances". On my next trip, i will spend more time investigating this. On a positive note,if you need more than $300/350 whatever your daily w/d limit is, you can use the cash advance. But again, know the fees/charges and what comes with it.

Also, when you go to your bank/credit union they should be able to inform you if they are a member of any particular group/network. If you look at the back of your card, you should see some type of group/network symbols. If i would contact your bank/credit union to find out since chances are, they arent in business alone.

In all of my travels so far, ive been able to w/d $$ out of an ATM. I look for the same symbol on the ATM as is on the back of my VISA card and go from there. If it doenst work, i will try a different bank or vendor.

happy trails.

Please be sure to look over Rick's website, since he has excellent maps, advice, and so on, which is a little more "edited" than newsboard posts. For example, on ATMs:
http://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/money/cash-machine-atm-tips
which is under the larger heading, Travel Tips
http://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips
But for example, I look at his railroad travel time maps online all the time.

In answer to your question, I want to observe that quite a few years ago, Bank Of America "forced" me to accept a VISA-brand Debit Card in place of the Bank Of America "ATM" card that I had been carrying for years. They were able to get me to do so (I was reluctant to carry such direct access to my bank account, if you can imagine that ... ) by saying (I wonder if it was true or not) that I could keep the ATM card if I really insisted, but it would only be usable within the United States. I had been using the ATM card, with a four-digit numeric PIN, in Europe for at least 15 years before that. So I suggest you make sure you know the exact "identity" of the card you are discussing in your OP.

I normally never use my B of A debit card for store purchases in the USA, only for banking. That's a personal preference that many Americans might find peculiar. But I should tell you that one time in Belgium, when I could not otherwise make a transaction at an unattended gas station, I gave the B of A debit card and its PIN a try. It worked, even though I thought my lack of a chip and PIN card was going to keep my car running on fumes ...

Now that B of A has announced that I will be paying 3% of my own money for withdrawing cash abroad (instead of the 1% I was paying for all those years) I am looking for a credit union that will be my future source of paper money while traveling. I have found that my American Express card is refused (because of the higher merchant fee they charge, I think) even more in Europe than in the US. So for a restaurant or hotel in Europe, I usually use my AARP VISA card, which is issued by Chase Bank. It's a conventional, horizontal-swipe, credit card. I am getting a chiip-and-PIN credit card from a credit union, which has 0% foreign transaction fees, which I will be switching to, but not closing the AARP card, because of its reward program and zero annual fee.

The only place where I know chip-and-PIN to be a really serious obstacle to Americans is in the Netherlands, but train ticket machines are an issue in other major destination countries. Chip-and-PIN is a separate issue you may have to research separately in old discussion threads here, using the Search box. But I understand that to NOT be the subject of your question.

For identification purposes, I have been to Europe over thirty times in the last 25 years.

To give a shorter answer to your question. I do think that ATM card and debit card are used interchangeable. I have carried two debit cards (VISA branded) for years but have never used them for point of sale. Just as a cash card from any ATM. It has been reported here that you can get a ATM only card that cannot be used for point of sale. An ATM only card will work at any European ATM provided that the card uses a network support by the ATM. The two most common networks in Europe are Plus and Cirrus which is Mastercard and Visa. As long as your ATM card indicates one of these two networks you will be OK. Conventional wisdom says not to use a debit card for purchases in Europe because the theft protection is difference and more complicated.

With regard to the AE card, American Express is not widely accepted in Europe. The Visa and Mastercard are the easiest to use. For us, we use about 95% cash and very few credit card charges except for the last day or two when we are managing our Euro reserve for the next trip.

Beth,
Check with your bank to make sure that your ATM card can be used internationally. Many can. Occasionally, ATM cards are not part of one of an international network. For example, my credit union's plain ATM card does not work outside North America. Instead, I would have to use their Visa debit card to withdraw money from that account.

In order to know for certain you should contact the issuing bank. As long as it is part of one of the banking networks it should work but some banks may limit the use to domestic ATM's.
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You are correct in your reading that AMEX is not as widely accepted as Visa & MC

Non-acceptance of AmExp is an old saw that's gotten pretty well reversed in the last few years.

As of May 1, 2014, the Delta AMEX credit card (other AMEX credit cards too?) no longer includes a foreign transaction fee when making purchases internationally..

Thank you everyone for your advice and personal experiences. I started with my bank when I first saw the word "debit" being used exclusively for ATM withdraws on the forums - knowing that we do not have a "debit" card. At first my bank told me that we would need to switch out our traditional ATM only card for a debit card to use overseas and that they don't really issue the old ATM cards much anymore - but then a different representative told me that I was fine to keep using my simple ATM card and it would be fine to use in Europe. This was interesting as we just received new cards and we did check and they are not "debit" cards, just cash access cards for ATM - we can not make purchases with them. Here at home we would never use a debit, point of sale card, as we typically use our credit card (for convenience, one monthly bill, and for cash back) or we use cash (that we access from the ATM - with the simple bank card). The debit card directly linked to our checking or savings account seems like a risk for a convenience that we do not need or use. I will call back to the bank and try to get a straight answer but I imagine just to be safe we will be getting a new card and new PIN to remember.

I will also begin looking into the best Visa or Mastercard for our situation that maximizes the cash back/points while minimizing the fees charged overseas. We are traveling with our 3 children on a RS tour with independent travel on either end. We will be in Europe for almost a month so we will need a high limit and low transaction fees as I imagine we will be charging more then the typical solo or couples travelers - where it makes more sense to deal mostly in cash. Our attraction tickets and entrance fees, meals, transportation, and lodging will be quite a bit in each transaction and I am not sure we want to be carrying around that much cash - or accessing the ATM daily or more often. We will have euros for incidentals, meals on the go, and all smaller purchases but I imagine at tourist sights and sit down meals we will be using credit.

Thank you all again for your responses.

We've been taking two trips a year (five weeks each) to Europe for years now and we only use ATM cards and credit cards that have no currency conversion fee. I've never had a debit card for security reasons. The ATM cards work fine here in the US and just as well in Europe.

Thank you Nancy. Knowing that others have had success in Europe with simple cash ATM cards gives me hope for calling talking with the bank again on Monday. We will now concentrate on combing through all of the low fee/no fee credit cards to find the one that fits our needs.

We do not have an account with any bank. We have two accounts with one credit union, one in each of our names and one account with another credit union with both our names. We each have a VISA credit card and a MasterCard debit card with the former in our separate names. We have no credit cards and one VISA debit card each with the latter. The debit cards work for withdrawing cash at ATMs and for point-of-sale transactions. They are (almost) the only option for Costco where we regularly shop.

• We each take our credit cards (total 2) and our debit cards (total 4) on our trips. We never use the debit cards except to get cash and we have never had a problem with them -- remember they are branded VISA and MasterCard. We never get cash anywhere but from a bank ATM in Europe and usually only inside the bank. It seems like there are more of those available than toilets most places we have been.
• CU #1 has a generous cash withdrawal policy, even after a recent cut back in withdrawal limits. They will up it for our trips, but so far it hasn't been needed.
• CU #2 has a very limited cash withdrawal policy ($400 will buy about 288 euro today) and no amount of cajoling would convince them to up it last year. So we use it rarely on trips, only as a backup.
  

I would want to be VERY sure that the person you talked to at your bank knew what they were talking about. In fact, I would go in person to the bank to talk to someone knowledgeable about these things. It would be awful to get to Europe and not be able to get any cash out of an ATM.

Don't overthink it.

Any debit/atm card will work fine for cash withdrawals.

For credit cards, the FTF will be from zero to three percent.

A two percent FTF might be average. Thus, you'll lose one percent on currency conversion from an atm withdrawal - - that makes the net difference between the two about one percent. Assuming you split your expenses between the two methods, what's one percent of the charges - - anything significant or worth the time and trouble of getting a new card just for one trip? If you charge five grand, the cost is fifty bucks, max. What's that do to your credit rating, both from the standpoint of having more potential debt or the consequences to the credit rating of cancelling a card later (if this consideration is important)?

With any two cards that will activate an atm (from separate banks) and any two of MC/Visa/AmExp you can travel the world indefinitely.

Thanks Ed. We will need to get another Credit Card as we both have Am. Ex. and no MC or Visa. But other then that, we think we have our answer and we are good with our simple ATM. Calling the bank in the morning just to double check.

Ed, I try to only report first-hand, personal experiences I've had here, unless the OP asks for research information. I don't pass on vague reports that I cannot provide support for.

I have personally found, between 2010 and 2014, that American Express credit card acceptance has declined in the high-traffic locations I travel to, both in the US and mainstream Western Europe. Beyond mainstream Western Europe, say, in Croatia, Am Ex was only rarely accepted. I might add that I'm not a "budget" traveler, as the term is usually understood.

Tim, I wouldn't have the guts to post other than from personal experience. I am generally a budget traveler in the meanest sense of the term. Sometimes I change modes. Regardless, my AmExp use in Europe consistently has the most, as well as the highest, charges and has run the gaument from single expressos to cross-roads gas stations to hotels bills higer than those that would give an acute case of the vapors to a 'non-budget' traveler as the term is generally understood. I also travel the mainstream and non-mainstream rest of the world.
For identification purposes, I've been to Europe over a hundred times in the last twenty-five years........and then there's the rest of the world......and then there was all the times before twenty-five years ago.

Experiences don't have to match.

Basic Rule of Etiquette: Don't guess about somebody else.

The key question is whether your ATM card has a Visa, MasterCard, or Plus logo anywhere on it. Those are the most widely accepted at European ATMS and you'll see the logos on the machine. The international transaction is being handled through one of those networks, rather than every European bank having to talk directly to every US bank. If your card doesn't have that logo, your bank probably offers one that would be worth getting before you leave home.