As banking becomes more computerized and interlinked, I suppose this was inevitable.....
https://www.castanet.net/news/Business/225692/Borderless-debit-card-arrives
While the rates may be cheaper than those offered by Banks, the providers of this card will make money by investing the funds that customers have deposited in their "borderless" accounts.
This look like it may be more useful for Canadians. At the moment, I don't pay any transaction fees for my credit union card and the exchange rate is a hair above the interbank rate so how can it get any cheaper?
The articles seems to have a lot of double talk - at least from a US perspective.
....which allows users to hold balances in multiple currencies and spend it at home and abroad with lower foreign exchange fees than traditional banks......
For me that makes little sense. Where is the savings? And, probably not subject to US banking regulations.
I don't know if your article is for the same thing but Transferwise has recently announced a similar product.
Fintech will make a lot of financial services (p2p transfers, foreign transactions, paying without any card, online bill paying, etc.) cheaper in the next five to ten years. I can't wait, but I draw the line at a microchip in me.
Ah - after trying for a while - the page linked has just come up, and it is for the same Transferwise. I've had good success with them in the past, I am actually considering getting one of those borderless accounts. I haven't yet looked at all the details.
Ken, I just picked up a no foreign transaction fee card from Home Trust Visa which I will use once we're across the pond. No annual fee, 1% cash back, but no trip insurance included. It does have CDW though. So for anything that I need to pay for in advance (airfare, car rental, apartment deposits, train tickets) i use either my VISA with trip insurance ($2500 per person) or my MasterCard with trip insurance ($2000 per person) in case I need to cancel. Both of those do have a 2.5% foreign transaction fee. I wont use either of those over there.
I guess my point is, there is at least one other no foreign transaction fee option in Canada. There seem to be lots of these options in the Excited States.
Peter,
That's certainly another option, but the difference with these new cards is that they're a debit card and the customer stores the money in advance in the currency of choice. I prefer to use a credit card for things like car rentals, but it would be nice to also have a debit card available for other things.
