Originally Posted by
flashware
It always tracks pretty much spot on to the spot rate of the day when withdrawing cash from it (no withdrawal fee unless the ATM itself has one) or purchasing.
There are
quite a few cards in the UK that do this. Another advantage is that card holders are often given the opposite side of the price, i.e. the bid instead of the offer or the offer instead of the bid. This is because the card networks (e.g. MasterCard and Visa) only trade net amounts in the FX markets, i.e. the net flow of aggregate bought and sold amounts in a particular currency pair. On the same card network and same day, if for example more money is spent by US-based card holders in the UK than is spent by UK-based card holders in the US, then the card network will buy a net amount of GBP/USD. This means that UK-based card holders, who are selling GBP/USD, are given the offer instead of the bid, i.e. a much better GBP/USD rate than the interbank rate.