banking while away?
 

Angie and myself are british residents with UK passports and bank accounts.
up to this moment in time we have used the 'nationwide' "flexaccount" (Nationwide Building Society: Mortgages, Savings, Current Accounts, Banking, Insurance, Credit Cards, Loans, Investments) as our main current account and using it's associated 'visa' debit card for withdrawing cash from ATMs and periodically paying directly for products (we tend to avoid this)
we have always we needing large cash amounts used the card and passport to withdraw direct from banks (as opposed to their ATM) up to $1000 (thus avoiding ATM cash limits).
All this has been very good and generally worked very well, smooth and seamless through a variety of countries from europe through asia and into the americas.

However . . . . .
Nationwide have decided to change their policy and are now charging for foreign cash withdrawals, until now this has been free.

My question is, does anybody know of an alternative bank which offers global atm usage and minimal charges (zero ideally)

while not exclusively looking for a UK bank it may be more difficult to open bank account in non residential country ??? not sure ??

any ideas ?

Phil.

have been using the santander zero credit card ,its excatly what it says no charges what so ever including cash withdrawn any where in the world , as long as you pay it back in time have a direct debit setup but if any one knows any others would good to hear

Also worth looking at Norwich & Peterbourough's Gold account - VISA debit card, fee free globally as of today, provided you deposit £500/month.

Hi,

I have a Nationwide account too which I use whenever I'm abroad (most of the time) and was disappointed to see that they had changed their approach. Despite the increases they are still cheaper than the vast majority of debit cards but there are now better options (see the links below for details).

If I were starting out I would go for the Norwich and Peterborough but it is a pain changing current accounts, reorganising direct debits etc, especially from overseas. So I think I may take out a Caxton pre-paid card online and load this from the Nationwide account. This allows you to use ATMs without a charge. Only trouble is it's Mastercard which isn't so good for Africa where I'm based.


Overseas Spending Charges: Full Debit & Credit card breakdown...

Cheap Travel Money: Top cards for spending abroad...

Try Royal Bank of Canada

The missus and I received our new Caxton cards last month, which should do the job.

Link: Prepaid MasterCard Travel Money Card | Currency Card | Caxton FX


.

thanks people.

currently investigating options - looks like N & P will be best fit for us, so long as we can 'easily' open from outside of UK

phil.

I've been using the Caxton card on our trip through Africa - it's ATM only, but you can use it everywhere you can use Mastercard - we've very rarely had a problem and they dont charge a fee for withdrawal, and the conversion rates are excellent.