My daughter has been at Oxford for the past three years. She has one card through my visa with USAA, her own USAA checking account, her own USAA Visa card and a UK bank issued Visa.

Any charges on the USAA Visa cards, hers or mine, have a 1% forex fee. This is a Visa fee, not a bank fee. Other than that the exchange rate is the same as OANDA shows for that date - an interbank rate, so it's a good deal.

For cash, the USAA bank ATM cards don't charge any fees for withdrawing in the UK. Nor do the ATM there. So we've found the lowest cost way to transfer money to her UK account is to have her do an ATM withdraw and then a cash deposit at her UK bank. Wire transfers are expensive and have hidden fees on top of that.