Using debit card in Italy

As long as you inform your bank when and where you will be traveling, you should have no problems. As a backup, you should ideally carry cards from two separate accounts.

Yes your ATM card will work but....make damn sure you call your bank and tell them you will be making withdrawals in Italy with the dates. Also make sure they have your cell phone number and ask that that be the contact number while you are gone. No use calling your home phone when you are in Italy. Ask your bank about upping your daily withdrawal rate for the period you will be gone. Generally there is a fee which is the same for 50 dollars or 500 (this varies according to bank and your account status). Get large chunks of money and tuck the excess in the money belt I am SURE you are carrying. FYI many ATMs will limit how much cash you can withdraw (here as well as abroad). Having your daily limit upped will mean if necessary you can say take 200 E out of an ATM in Florence and that evening take 200 more out in Venice. As Nancy said try to take two debit (and, this is me, two different credit) cards. Travel partner one set, you another. My husband's ATM card was eaten in Berlin but, no worries, I had a backup!

Italy is the only place I have traveled where my former credit union wouldn't allow their card to be used for ATM transactions there. On the same trip, I used my card all over Germany, Austria, and Switzerland but not in Italy. I called in advance of my trip as I always do (like Marie mentioned), so I was aware of the restriction before traveling and simply planned to have enough Euro on hand to get me through the Italy portion before arriving from Austria. Italy wasn't the only country on the credit union's strict fraud list, but it was the only one I cared about at the time. Good advice to have two cards from separate accounts.

Anne-Marie, Your Card should work fine in Italy for ATM cash withdrawals, but probably won't work for POS debit transactions. It would be a good idea to verify which networks your Bank is affiliated with (ie: Cirrus, Maestro, etc.) as you'll need to use ATM's with those networks. As others have mentioned, be sure to notify your Bank of the dates you'll be travelling, and review your daily withdrawal limit with them. Again as mentioned, it's a really good idea to have a "backup" ATM card in case of any problems with the primary card (that does happen on occasion). One other thing to mention - your travel funds must usually be in a chequing account with a four-digit PIN. Happy travels!

You might go to your bank and ask them. In 2001 I went to my bank and asked them if there was an ATM that would accept their card in Berchtesgaden. The had a book the size of a phone book with every town in Europe and where the ATM was that accepted their cards (Plus or Cirrus) in that town. That info might be online now.

Your card works at any ATM that displays one of the logos on your card. If your card has a Visa/Mastercard logo on it, it will work anywhere. I think that's also true of the major syndicates Plus/Cirrus. Some of the small bank/credit union ATM cards run into problems if they don't subscribe to a major syndicate. As has been said, confirm and reconfirm that the bank knows you will be travelling. If not, they are likely to slap a hold on your card. Bring the non-800 number for your bank - they won't take the hold off until they've talked to you (even then it clears overnight). Know your daily limit. Many banks won't change your limit on request. Know how much $ you can withdraw and how much that is in Euros. Remember it refreshes at midnight at home, you can get two withdrawals in a day - if you time it right. Bring a back up card from a different account. If your ATM card is lost/stolen, the bank will freeze the account. Another card from the same account won't help at all.

My family and I are finishing our trip to Europe with a week in Rome. We've had no problems using our debit card to access cash from my checking account. The only difference is that I'm limited to a 250€. In Germany, France and Austria my limit was 300€.

Just got back from Barcelona and France. No problems with our ATM card. On our trip to Italy and Switzerland, we have no problems there either. For this current trip, we now have a Schwab Bank debit card with a Visa feature. It worked great. It worked everywhere. As a side note, we used this same card for most of our Visa transactions as well including our hotels. Sounds a bit weird but Schwab assured us that we could use the Visa feature up to any amount in our account. We did have a chunk of money in our account before we left so that we could to this. It's important to note that when you use the Visa or Mastercard feature of a debit card, the money comes directly out of your checking account. We did all this to avoid Visa's 3% charge on foreign transactions. I've been looking at our Schwab account online and I don't see any additional fees thus far. No fees on the ATM withdrawls either.

we had no problems with our debit card in italy ... ours was mastercard based and was acceptable in most places ... i kept it in a small pouch that is attached to your belt and fold down into your under/pants ... the spare cards and cash were kept in a locked pacsafe travesafe in our hotel room ... we kept our daily cash on a pacsafe waistpouch ... and we only took what we would use for the day ... many banks now have atm's in the bank and we used those wherever possible, otherwise we had one person facing outwards 'on guard' so to speak ... there are atm's everywhere in europe, so you will have no problem accessing money, just use a common card as some folks on our tour found issues with travelex cards ... interestingly, we had a british pound based debit card and a euro based debit card ... when we used the euro card to purchase something in a store in europe, we had to enter out PIN on the terminal ... when using the british pound one in the UK, it printed out a receipt for us to sign ... never could work out that one!!