We use the Charles Schwab debit card when traveling from here in the US to Europe. We had no issues while in Austria, Czech Republic, and Germany. There are no international transaction fees, and no atm fees. Just wanted to throw that out there.

I carry three. One travel spending card that offers no transaction fee and good conversion rates.

Secondly a standard debit card from my main bank,

Thirdly a credit card for back up.

I keep them in different places in case I loose one or get mugged.

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And I carry four cards, minimum: two debit cards and two credit cards. When I anticipate complexity (or on a long trip), three of each. There is nothing like having a debit card get eaten by an ATM at the beginning of a long holiday weekend to put the fear of god into you....unless it's having a credit card cancelled by a distant corporate office due to activity they view as suspicious.

Most of my cards have favorable terms for world travel. Some are better than others, so always read the fine print. One of each kind of card is always a MasterCard, since every so often Visa cards are not accepted, even in Africa.

I've never messed with pre-paid cards. Maybe I'm old and inflexible, but the advantages never seemed worth juggling and tracking another account. I do take steps to limit my exposure to theft or fraud while traveling, and I never, ever log into an account while on a trip--I once had the experience of logging in, then receiving a suspicious activity notification from my bank which resulted in the card being shut down. I view any text, phone, or internet activity as subject to security breaches--and yes, there are obvious steps I might take to render this less likely, but see the above re "old and inflexible."

I do always carry some cash in US dollars, for all the obvious reasons.

Hope that's helpful.

Mark

I also carry four cards. Two visa and two Mastercard. I'm currently travelling through West Africa and I have always been able to get cash from ATMs when one doesn't work for whatever reason.

My prepaid Mastercard gets most use and has worked in a lot of West African ATMs. I'm with Caxton. A nice feature is the option of a secondary card. I have this stashed on motorcycle for emergency use. Similar to Revolut, it has an app for loading cash etc.

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i usually use a selection debit/credit cards but is there a new way on the horizon ? It is very early days but after a breakdown /repair at honda in Lisbon last year I enquired if they accepted Btc ,no (in portugese) but who knows in a couple of years ?

podcast if anyone interested
https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podca...k-with-bitcoin

Well now that you've mentioned it, has anyone else managed to do much with cryptocurrency on a trip (other than speculating on it to fund the trip in the first place)? I do keep a bit of an eye out for these things but I've yet to see anywhere advertising openly that they'll take payment in any form of 'bitcoin' (shorthand to cover all the various forms).

I'm sure there are places (not counting the darker side of life anyway) but compared to paying for goods / services in the usual way (cash, cards of all sorts, bank transfer, Paypal / Applepay etc, even some of the oddball local town currencies that had their few weeks in the sun a while back) crypto has not made much of an impact - that I've seen anyway. But maybe I lead too sheltered a life to recognise the future has arrived. Anyone using it?

I have a bitcoin wallet since some years which I used to receive overseas payments. I immediately would use crypto payments if there would be a bigger acceptance in Germany/Europe and a hazzle free payment application given. With crypto payments you will never run into known credit card fraud issues!

So far i use different types of credit cards, bank cards and paypal. Cards are linked to apple pay and I do mostly use apple watch for payments. Paypal works only with ios app.

BitPay is afaik the only Bitcoin and cryptocurrency payment service who offers a linking to apple pay. But it`s not pure crypto payment, it`s more combing a crypto currency account with a credit card and an app.

Cash is still a necessary to carry backup

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When we traveled to Serbia this year we used Mastercard without any problems, but mostly we used cash anyway. I was surprised that even some big shops didn't allow paying by card, lol. And truly, there's a problem with Revolut card while traveling, so people from Reddit are right. Too good we usually have several cards with us.

Oh, one more thing...We had a surprise when we returned from traveling as our landlord was trying to deceive us. He asked us to pay some extra money for nothing, but we later contacted [removed] and he explained to us that landlord isn't right in this case. Lord, why do people always want to deceive one another?

I thought of this thread last week while taking a brief, un-adventurous little trip around the resource-extractive country to our north. I used my favorite credit card to pay for motel rooms, ski passes, fuel, and the occasional liquid sustenance. Halfway through the trip I got a text at 5:00am asking if I'd made a certain purchase; I texted back that I definitely had not, but declined to enter the requested account information because....you know.

Turned out it was a genuine breach and my card was abruptly cancelled. I switched to the spare I was carrying, and life went on. But it made me think about the frequency with which such stuff happens these days, and I think for my next brief little trip I'll take more than one spare card, and maybe an extra debit card as well. Even in the relative comfort of western Canada, no more than a day's drive from home, I don't want to be without functional credit if I can help it.

The issuing bank said they'll let me know what their investigation turns up, but it's obvious I'll never know which roadside motel, ski area, gas station, or wifi network (while using Booking.com) stole my card data.

Mark

I sue a Santander mastercard for just about everything. It even works at fuel pumps in Malaysia. It has an app on my phone that tells me the cost in sterling so I can see what I am really paying in real time. The exchange rate is good too.

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Tim & Sue Angus

Before I retired, one of my job responsibilities was delivering new aircraft to lesser developed countries. In my last year of work, I visited 60 countries (some only for a quick fuel stop, but even then, that involved buying several thousand dollars of jet fuel & food, landing fees, etc.)

Now that I am retired, I ride my two motorcycles (one in Europe, one in North America) in many different countries.

I carry a MasterCard (Maestro), an American Express card (plain green one, as simple as you can get), and a bank debit card. I've never, ever been stuck with that combination.

I use the MasterCard as my primary payment method and have found that it works at 99.9% of the places that accept credit cards of any form.

I use the bank debit card to withdraw money from ATMs, and have never ever had it rejected. The only exception has been in countries where there are sanctions applied that affect international banking transactions, such as North Korea, South Sudan, and Iran. It is essential that the debit card have an Interac or Maestro logo (or Visa equivilent) on it. I don't use the debit card to pay for transactions - I use the credit card for that.

I usually withdraw cash in increments equal to about $200 US, this to keep the fees reasonable (ATM fees are typically 'per transaction', not a percent, although I have noticed a growing switch to percentage fees, such as 2%, in the past couple of years).

The American Express card is a "emergency backup", not so much for credit card use but because if I really get stuck, I can find an American Express office or corresponding bank and get cash from them. Troublesome, I suppose, but that's a level of service that the regular credit cards don't offer. I've never had to do that.

So, for me, it's basically one primary credit card (MasterCard), one primary debit card, and one 'emergency' credit card. I've never had any problems and never been stuck getting cash or making a payment - and I have been to a lot of REALLY out of the way third world countries.

Michael

Revolut are the one everyone is using at the moment.

I used it in South America just last winter. And it was great.

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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

Although I do not dispute that ATMs in lesser developed countries may have security problems such as malware in the ATM software, the primary responsibility for protecting bank card users from fraudulent use lies with the bank that has issued the card.

The banks do this using various strategies, such as:

1) Monitoring the customers' travel history and card use history. For example, is the location and amount of the withdrawal consistent with the past behaviour of the customer? If they made a withdrawal in Paris yesterday, and bought gasoline south of Paris today, does it make sense that they are making a withdrawal in Las Vegas 2 hours later?

2) Exchanging information between banks about ATMs at banks in member (e.g. Maestro) networks that are showing anomalous customer use patterns.

Like I said in my post above, I spent years travelling far more intensively than any overlander could - Canada one day, Alaska the next, Siberia the next day, Korea two days later, then through a whole bunch of Polynesian and Melanesian islands over the next 5 days - and I have never had a problem with unauthorized ATM withdrawals.

I have had problems with unauthorized (fraudulent) purchase transactions, but in every case, my issuing bank caught the fraudulent purchase and notified me immediately.

The principal risk to overlanders associated with fraudulent purchases is that when the issuing bank catches one, they will cancel the card immediately to stop further abuse. Getting a replacement card can be a headache if you are away from home and travelling every day. That's why I recommend carrying 3 cards - a debit card (for ATMs), a primary credit card (e.g. MasterCard), and a backup credit card (e.g. American Express).

Michael

Good summary - we too make sure we have multiple options: debit cards, credit cards, ATM cards (which we use in most places), some cash reserve, and application-based payment capability (e.g., MPESA in East Africa, Daviplata in Colombia).

I usually just use one card: DKB Visa (german) which allows "fee free" cash world wide from atm, and "fee free" payment in foreign currencys. Both can be up to 2.5% per transaction.

The account itself is free (too for foreigners), but you need a plus membership (at least 701 euro income per month) - what you can pay yourself too.

The rest is backup (1x mastercard, 1x debit card). Mastercard is stronger in africa but is usually geoblocked in countrys like nigeria (you had to call your bank).

Just go the DKB way if you have euro`s - otherwise you have the exchange risk.

Surfy

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