Prepaid Travel Cards - Using Forex Cards for Travel

Traveling abroad is no big deal anymore. However, that doesn’t make a foreign destination any less of an excitement! The stark difference in culture, food, and language elevates the experience to another dimension. Nevertheless, there is a lot more that one encounters while traveling to a foreign country other than the language and food. One such critical aspect is the rattling difference in currency across nations. 

Currency conversion is not as simple as you might think. It's not as if you can walk in and exchange dollars instead of your INR's. Before you start packing for your vacation, it is essential to understand foreign currency and how to deal with it. If you are not careful enough about currency conversion, it can turn out to be a point of bother, which is why you should commit enough time to research on the topic.

A basic knowledge of the conversion rates, service charges, and other fees involved in the process will definitely help you to relieve a lot of stress and enjoy the place more.

Although cash may seem like a good enough option, but it has its own set of cons. With the advancement in technology, the world is now running on plastic money, and thus, there are limitless options to carry cash to a foreign country.

However, it is important that your cards are accepted over at your destination. That’s why you should take up prepaid forex cards while traveling abroad, as they are really suitable for this very purpose. First, let’s take a look at the different types of cards made available for travelers:

Travel Credit Cards

These cards are especially built to suit your traveling needs. These cards come with several benefits, which allows you to make purchases and payments at retail stores, restaurants, or anywhere else while traveling. Besides, most of these travel credit cards offer bonus points for booking flights and hotels. Apart from that, the more you spend, the more reward points you earn; you can reap their benefits by redeeming them later.

Forex Travel Cards

Prepaid travel cards like Forex travel cards can be loaded with multiple currencies, and you can avoid paying additional conversion charges. These travel cards are readily available and provide better exchange rates that do not fluctuate once money is loaded on the forex card. These cards are safer as well as cheaper in terms of conversion rates and charges.

Forex travel cards have many advantages over cash, credit cards, debit cards or traveler's cheques. They offer better exchange rates for loading currencies than you would get on buying foreign currency as cash. Moreover, it also gets easy for the banks to provide forex cards, as it is a cheaper option. Here are the many benefits that you can avail by using forex travel cards:

1. No Effect of Fluctuations - Forex cards loaded with foreign currency are immune to the fluctuations in the currency value, as the amount is added at locked-in exchange rates. So, for instance, if you have USD 1000 on your forex card, the value in the card will stay USD 1000 irrespective of fluctuations in the INR-USD exchange rate.    

2. Forex for Safety - Safety is always a concern, and forex travel cards guarantee your financial security. Forex cards come enabled with chip and PIN technology for safeguarding the money in them, making it a way better option than carrying cash. Besides, you can block the card and freeze the balance in case the card gets lost or stolen. Moreover, once a secondary forex card is issued, the funds can readily be transferred to it.   

3. Multi-Currency Cards - What if you have to visit two different countries with different currencies? It would be insane if one decided to carry cash, as they will surely lose out a lot of money in exchange rates. That's where forex cards act as your savior. Prepaid forex travel cards allow you to carry multiple foreign currencies at the same time in a single card. For instance, Axis Bank forex travel cards enable you to load up to 16 popular currencies such as Denmark Krone (DKK), Australian Dollars (AUD), Hong Kong Dollars (HKD), Euro (EUR), Japanese Yen (JPY), etc.  

4. No Exchange Rates - Exorbitant exchange rates are levied on the use of debit or credit cards, whereas the prepaid forex cards have no additional charges when you swipe it at PoS counters abroad. The rates otherwise are incredibly high, and would cost you around 5-11% extra of the total transaction charges!    

5. No Dynamic Currency Conversion Fee - The Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) fee is not applicable on forex cards, as they are already loaded with the local currency of a foreign country. However, if you are using a debit card or credit card for a transaction, then DCC would add an extra 3-5% charge on your transaction cost.

6. Universal Recognition - Forex travel cards are universally recognized and accepted, unlike outdated traveller's cheques.

7. Withdrawing Cash -  Forex cards can be used to withdraw money from any nearby ATM, as opposed to encashing traveler's cheques, which would put you through the trouble of finding establishments willing to accept it. Besides, you can even use forex cards for online transactions through e-commerce platforms abroad.

To Sum Up

Traveling abroad needs to be safe and comfortable experience for you to truly enjoy it. Forex travel cards will help you beat the hassle of carrying cash around while traveling abroad. So, if you have plans to travel abroad, consider buying a Prepaid Forex Card to roam around stress-free.