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My experiences with the Travelex Supercard

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I was over in Amsterdam last week which gave me an opportunity to test out my new Supercard from Travelex.

As I outlined here, this is a revolutionary new Visa card which translates your foreign currency purchases into Sterling and then recharges them (in £) to another Visa or Mastercard.  You earn full reward points from the card where your transaction ends up and you save 3% on foreign exchange fees with each purchase.

Travelex is not currently taking new applications for Supercard.  The card is currently in a beta phase where a few thousand people are trying it out.

Supercard

The first thing to note is:

You can change the PIN of your Supercard at any UK ATM

Travelex does not tell you this but it works fine.

Whilst in Amsterdam I made a number of transactions:

A cash withdrawal in Euros

Machine-based transactions (ie train ticket vending machines)

Manual transactions (eg hotel, restaurants)

I had set up my Supercard so that all of the transactions were recharged to my IHG Rewards Club Premium Visa card, as I am currently working towards the free night voucher for spending £10,000.

The good news is that the Supercard worked fine every time.  It is thinner than a standard credit card, and your personal details are printed on it rather than embossed, but that was not a problem.

The even better news is that it does seem to work as promised.  The InterContinental cheekily tried to charge me €32 in £ without giving me the € option – the credit card machine showed £25-ish.  I insisted on paying in Euro and it eventually went through my Supercard at £23-ish.

The bad news is that the Supercard app has been very troublesome.  Every time I try to bring up a list of recent transactions it crashes.   I have never managed to bring up a transaction list successfully.  I am able to view my last transaction but not the full list.

Transactions are taking some time to reach my credit card statement – they process at the same speed as a normal card purchase.  The transactions were all done on Monday and Tuesday last week.  They started to hit my IHG credit card statement on Friday and, by Sunday evening, the last one had yet to arrive.

This is how they appear on my IHG card statement:

Tms Supercard NS Schiphol, Chester (NS is Dutch Railways, Chester is where Supercard is based)

Tms Supercard, Tvx Schiphol, Chester (cash withdrawal from a Travelex cashpoint)

What was most impressive is that the €120 ATM cash withdrawal has gone through my IHG Rewards Club credit card as a purchase.  This means I will earn points on it and will not pay any cash advance fees or interest.

So far, then, so good – but Travelex really needs to iron out the bugs in the app.  I would have had more confidence in the card initially if I had been able to see my transactions in real time.

The biggest test for Supercard will be in Germany next month where we will have a very large hotel bill to settle.  If that goes through OK, saving me over £100 in FX fees and probably getting me over the line for my IHG Rewards Club Premium Visa free night, I will be very happy.

PS.  In my initial article on Supercard I didn’t list the spending limits that are imposed.  These are the key figures you need to remember:

Maximum value of single ATM transaction – £250
Maximum daily ATM Cash withdrawal – £500
Maximum ATM Cash withdrawal per 4-day cycle – £1,000
Maximum daily Point of Sale Spend – £5,000
Number of Purchases per day – 15
Number of ATM Transactions per day – 3
Maximum card usage in one month – £20,000
Maximum card usage in one year – £20,000

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General

Comments (159)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • nick haley says:
    15 Jun15 June 09:36

    Such frustration waiting with no timeframe for this card. Sounds like we have the ForEx God-Card but the execution as so many have said is a mega-bodge.

  • n says:
    15 Jun15 June 09:54

    I received mine a few weeks ago, have sent mine with my brother to Spain who will be making two 10eu cash withdrawals for me as a test, one with a visa linked and one with a Mastercard linked. Should be able to make a straight comparison then.

  • Brian says:
    15 Jun15 June 10:04

    Am I going to regret this post?

    Surely the cash withdraw element allows me to easily purchase miles on the cheap?

    I withdraw €25,000 in the year and deposit it in my Euro bank account. I then use transferwise or another low exchange rate transfer back in to sterling.

    Lets take 01/06/2015, €1000 was £720.00 with Visa. The real cost at market exchange rate should have been £718.30.

    Looking at the typical margin made by transferwise, currently 1000 Euros would result in 720.24 through transferwise, the real market exchange rate is 723.69. I appreciate this is not 01/06/2015, but I am trying to get an indicative idea.

    So the visa charge is £1.70, the transferwise charge is £2.45, total charge £4.15.

    I’m afraid I’m an Aadvantage person rather than avios, but maybe someone else can advise. £720 on my visa credit card would result in 540 miles.

    Therefore 20,000 miles would be £153, with a mile costing 0.75p. A rough value of AAdvantage could be 1p / mile. To buy 20,000 miles would be ~ £400.

    So my conclusion is this probably not worth doing in volume given the exchange rate risks, and the effort involved, but could be a good way to get you over any reward trigger points.

    Thoughts?

    • steve says:
      15 Jun15 June 10:43

      This could be why there is a monthly and yearly limit. I agree with your idea, its just the FX risk that makes its a dubious project.

    • Rob says:
      15 Jun15 June 10:43

      I thought about this too. Given that few people have Euro bank accounts and, even if they do, there is a spread if you convert back into a £ bank account, it doesn’t work IMHO.

      • James says:
        15 Jun15 June 13:17

        How about £4 to withdraw 2x £250 in the UK – £500 towards a spending target?

        • sandgrounder says:
          15 Jun15 June 21:42

          It won’t work in the UK if attached to a credit card? I think I saw that in the FAQs.

      • ADS says:
        15 Jun15 June 13:22

        However if you have family that live in Euroland, and are happy to make EUR-GBP mid point transactions …

    • JQ says:
      15 Jun15 June 23:48

      You don’t need to transfer it back straight away, wait until the euro rises a bit then you might even profit in GBP. As long as you don’t do it on a day of high volatility or just after Greece leaves the euro etc.

      • Rob says:
        16 Jun16 June 12:03

        You need to be careful with things like that. I received a sum of money in October from Euroland and had the choice of keeping it in Euro or converting it (rate was 1.24 at the time). I decided to keep it in Euro and am now showing a substantial paper loss, assuming I end up spending that money in the UK, as the Euro has moved out to 1.34.

  • Neil says:
    15 Jun15 June 10:58

    That’s a very useful article and answered all of my questions as mine arrived Saturday.

    You’ve got to watch those hotels for trying on the dynamic currency conversion con – the Novotel in Düsseldorf did manage to pull that on me last month – I challenged it and they did agree to refund the £3.50 difference.

    Really looking forward to trying out my Supercard in Munich next week – wonder if it works for car hire – does anyone know?

    • Roger says:
      15 Jun15 June 12:54

      I think there is an issue with using the card for car hire.

      The card is treated as a debit card. Different rental companies have different criteria for accepting payment by debit card. They may or may not be able to post late charges on a debit card, for example.

      For car rentals, I’ll probably still be using an FX-free credit card.

      • Bav says:
        15 Jun15 June 14:09

        In my experience you can usually swap the card you want to pay with when you return the vehicle – if you remember (and have time!). They will probably keep the credit card on file for deferred charges (such as tolls etc.).

  • ComeFlyWithMe123 says:
    15 Jun15 June 12:00

    I tried to use it to pre-purchase bus / train tickets in the US for an upcoming holiday and it failed. Phoned Travelex and they said it was because that particular merchant did not accept prepaid cards. He then said to try again later. A really mixed answer and when I questioned him on it, he didn’t know which one to choose. Confidence in the card for upcoming holidays is at an all time low. I’ll certainly have a back up incase anything goes wrong.

  • Steve says:
    15 Jun15 June 13:39

    Around 7am BST this morning 11450JPY = 59.89GBP
    Transaction was processed instantly.

  • Swiss says:
    15 Jun15 June 13:49

    All extremely interesting and there is clearly some mileage to be had with this card (excuse the pun). But I’m still confused re GBP. Do we think GBP withdrawals in the UK trigger points – and at no cost? Would be too good to be true (and surely wouldn’t last…).

    • BlueHorizonUK says:
      15 Jun15 June 13:56

      UK withdrawals from an ATM is charged £2 each time.

      • sandgrounder says:
        15 Jun15 June 21:43

        You can’t use the Supercard in the UK if attached to a credit card. Only a debit card will work.

        • john says:
          16 Jun16 June 16:39

          Can you get UK retailers to charge you in Euro’s in the same way that European ones will try and charge you in GBP? Could be a useful work around maybe for some, although depends on their rates..

  • Barry says:
    15 Jun15 June 14:48

    Have been using it on a long weekend visit to New York. No problems at all from two $2000 plus phone transactions( that I thought might not work) to paying for yellow cabs. All 15 transactions showing on app on iPhone 6 and iPad. Though nothing as yet showing on my linked Diamond Club Visa!

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