What is the best credit card for foreign FX spending when someone else is paying?

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

• Jill Kinkell says:

  13 Aug13 August 08:51

  Curve linked to Barclays for me and OH has Halifax’s Clarity.

• David says:

  13 Aug13 August 09:40

  NatWest Black Rewards is Fx free for purchases and gives 0.5% cash back as rewards points which can be converted to cash or to various rewards including Avios. Card also gives 1% cash back on all supermarket spend. It’s not free though unless you have a NatWest Premier account.

• Rob says:

  13 Aug13 August 09:43

  Curve fees can hit 3.5% though – if you are a) over your £500 monthly FX cap, b) not paying in a ‘core’ currency and c) paying at weekends.

  • Phil says:

    13 Aug13 August 09:55

    I’ve found it easy to stay within my FX cap. If you are planning to go above it takes about thirty seconds in the app to switch to a tier that gives a higher limit and then downgrade again later. I don’t have an issue that it’s a lower fx rate during the week. I’d rather that, then the weekend rate be used as the rate for the entire week. Even the weekend rate is generally cheaper than other “non-fx” cards when I’ve looked at comparisons in the past. And let’s face it, 90% of the time most people will be using the main currencies such of Euro, Dollar etc. If I do happen to be going slightly off the beaten track, it’s easy enough to check in advance. It’s horses for courses, it ticks all of the main boxes for me (not topping up, 1.5 avios per £1 spent etc). If you travel every weekend to random countries with unusual currencies then maybe not so, but how many people fall into that category?

    • Phil says:

      13 Aug13 August 10:00

      Also meant to say that the free card gives up to £1,000 of fx free per month. If you have a player 2, that’s £2,000 in total.

      • soloflyer1977 says:

        13 Aug13 August 10:14

        This is exactly my strategy Phil.

    • JDB says:

      13 Aug13 August 10:12

      Yes, I don’t really understand why people are so hung up about the last couple of per cent when, if for example you book a hotel at the FHR or Virtuoso rate, even fully valuing the benefits, it’s like buying an aircraft at list price which is why the hotel still has the capacity to pay 15-20% commission to the booking agent. I would rather pay the right price for the hotel that will save multiple times the FX fee and not worry too much if I or a family member takes out the ‘wrong’ card to pay.

      • Rob says:

        13 Aug13 August 10:21

        Tend to agree. I’m certainly not in favour about taking out a credit card just to use outside the UK, especially as it reduces your ability to pick up extra rewards cards and its another monthly bill / another direct debit to watch. I certainly wouldn’t bother if my FX spend was only £5k or so per year.

        My personal spend is messier though, given we have six figures of FX spend if you include HfP – and for extra confusion the HfP spend is tax deductible so the value of the rewards effectively double.

      • RussellH says:

        13 Aug13 August 11:16

        I totally disagree.
        2.99% of £5000 is £149.50. That equals one of my (larger) monthly pension income payments and would pay for most of three lunches out for the two of us.
        Or I could think of it as the best part of a month’s grocery shopping. Either way it is most certainly not trivial.
        As far as I am concerned, every £1 that stays in my pocket and does not get taken by a bank is a win.
        And currently I do not see the relevance of Rob’s comment “it reduces your ability to pick up extra rewards cards”: these days there are none to pick up as far as I can see. The IHG card has gone and my Marriott and Hilton cards are both long closed to new holders. There is little point in my applying for new Amex cards as I already have both a Rewards and an Avios Amex. I have a Virgin credit card, but with just 4 points in the a/c using it is not going get me anything useful. There is nothing else available as far as I can see.

    • CamFlyer says:

      13 Aug13 August 12:35

      I find my Curve (+ Barclays; Virgin stopped working altogether about a year ago) is often rejected, at least for any sizeable transaction. On a recent trip, no spend in TRY, AED or BDT >~£50 equivalent went through, which makes Curve nearly useless. I’ve been using Amex Gold, plus VS MC and an Amex IEC for EUR.

      • Mikeact says:

        13 Aug13 August 13:51

        ‘Nearly useless’….for you. Surprised you still carry/use it.

      • Mr. AC says:

        13 Aug13 August 16:01

        This is very weird. I’ve had no rejections outside of outages, including paying £3000+ in person and £5000+ online.

    • Mikeact says:

      13 Aug13 August 13:57

      Agree…but it’s never been wholeheartedly welcomed on here.

• VickyTM says:

  13 Aug13 August 10:01

  If I buy flights in a foreign currency on the Amex gold, do I get 4 points per GBP?

  • dougzz99 says:

    13 Aug13 August 10:12

    3MR, each is an additional 1MR not double.

  • JDB says:

    13 Aug13 August 10:17

    Yes, it’s 3MR total now, plus potentially 0.5MR bonus so it’s basically a wash for the FX fee and gives you s75 which is pretty valuable for quite a few airlines. It’s also almost always much cheaper than having the airline bill you in £ and for many countries the fares are much cheaper on their domestic sites and not restricted to local residents.

• Singh says:

  13 Aug13 August 11:28

  Great read! Is this also the case for the AMEX business gold?

• Anouj says:

  13 Aug13 August 12:22

  Algbra gives 1.5% on all contactless transactions, even abroad.

• Jenny says:

  13 Aug13 August 12:27

  Many companies (including all I have worked for) require overseas expenses to be input into their expense claim system in the original currency incurred, and the software does the translation, which in my experience has been the spot rate. So even though the company will be reimbursing them, there is every incentive for me as an employee to use a credit card without an fx fee or poor fx rate. I use a Nationwide credit card for this purpose, which almost always translates at the spot rate (with only one exception over many years and a lot of overseas travel), and is at worst only a few pence different to tge fx rate used by company software. No rewards on this card, but it does mean I’m not out of pocket when travelling on company business.

  • Rob says:

    13 Aug13 August 12:56

    I can’t believe your staff are voluntarily paying 3% on what could easily be £5,000 for a week long trip in a decent hotel with a couple of pricey client dinners.

  • Scottpat78 says:

    13 Aug13 August 13:39

    Unfortunately I have a corporate card which I use for expenses. Using my personal cards would be a points gold mine. On the couple of occasions my corporate card has been declined (no real reason), I used my personal card and in the expenses system I was able to manually adjust the Fx rate to one that included the transaction fee. Is that possible with yours?

  • memesweeper says:

    13 Aug13 August 14:25

    Unless you paid in cash, they are reimbursing the wrong amount. You change the currency to GBP and put the price you paid into the system.

    Companies with inflexible procedures usually have something called a “grievance procedure”. I’d be lodging mine PDQ if anyone expected me to cover currency risk of moving rates to their “spot” at a later date, never mind 3% card fees and the like.

    Also, using your debit card isn’t great when there’s a wait for company reimbursement.

• Rob says:

  13 Aug13 August 14:04

  If you’d got the Barclaycard you would have disqualified yourself from the 50,000 Avios bonus ok the Avios Plus card!

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