The Lemon Fool

I'm heading to South Africa for the first half of July and then pretty much straight to Dubrovnik for the rest of the month.

I've looked at various ways of accessing currency in these places; prepaid cards, cash, but last year got a Halifax Clarity card which charges no fees on either spending or cash withdrawals abroad and uses the Mastercard rate for converting into sterling (I've just compared the £/Euro rate which is 1.146 compared to Travelex 1.116, so significantly better). The only downside to the Halifax Clarity card is that interest is charged on any cash withdrawals at 18.95%, so the maximum over a two week period would be around 0.7%. I'm wondering if I can get round that by loading some cash on my card so that there is never a balance outstanding to charge interest on. If there is anything outstanding I can just use it to buy normal stuff in the UK on my return.

Anybody used the Clarity card and what do they think of it?

Don't know about Clarity but some cards don't like being in credit, to the extent they might return it to your account.

With online access to your account anywhere these days, why not just pay off the balance every couple of days?

Scott.

I use a Clarity card to get cash while on holiday and simply pay a lump of cash to cover the withdrawals and approximate interest as soon as I get home, with anything else on my card being paid off by the due date. Seems to work. The thing I found a bit tricky was identifying which bank would not charge me for the transaction when I made the withdrawal - Santander were particularly expensive, iirc.

No, you can't deliberately put the account in credit - it's against the T&C's.

Paying off as and when is an option if you access to do so and are prepared to pay of the standard balance beforehand because that is where payments are allocated first.

I use FairFX pre-paid for cash withdrawals. So that is another option. Other pre-paid cards are of course available.

I use a Clarity card all the time abroad. There is no better way of getting cash abroad I set up a direct debit to pay it off in full, the charge is usually peanuts even though we spend quite a lot. Interest is only charged on cash advances not on card spending if you pay your balance off in full. So, use the card by getting a smallish cash advance and pay for everything else with the card.

I have withdrawn overseas cash on the Halifax Clarity card, then about an hour later popped into Starbucks & transferred the money to my Halifax account. Zero interest charged.