jumperabv3

The limit is your credit limit with PenFed.
If your card limit is $10,000 you can technically do 20 ATM withdrawals per day (just have Skype on your phone installed to call the 24/7 security department to release the block every 3-4 withdrawals or just call them once and tell them to be on the phone while you take out $500 after $500 lololololol)

Not sure about other banks but I did it in the UK as well as a tourist (although today I have UK cards) and I could take pretty much high figures as well, but not all banks were happy to do it ... it was Barclays that did it.

uds0

"all" hardly ever applies to anything.

Each bank has a different set of rules, including charging potentially substantially different fees for a teller vs ATM cash withdrawal. You really need to be very wary of the fine print in the pricing schedule and terms and conditions agreement.

And ... the bank you are using to get cash from the teller may charge an additional big fee!

tmiw

Used my Schwab debit card at a Scotiabank ATM in the Puerto Vallarta airport today to pull out $1600 pesos. The ATM charged me an additional $44.30 pesos on top of the amount I withdrew ($4.80 IVA/government tax + $30 ATM commission + $9.50 for some sort of theft protection thing according to Google Translate? I probably should have read the ATM prompts more closely.)

Anyway, xe.com rate looks to have been around $14.92 pesos per dollar at the time of the withdrawal meaning that it should have costed me approximately $110.21 USD; Schwab online banking shows a debit for $110.61 USD, or a 0.3% difference. Not bad, though I'm betting I'll probably need to call Schwab to manually reimburse the $30 pesos.

uds0

Let us know what Schwab does with the other crap fees besides the ATM operator fee.

IVA tax, theft protection, ... when will the crap fees end? I've never had any of these while traveling in Europe, Australia, China, or Thailand.

How the heck is getting you own money from an ATM in any way related to a "value added" tax? Back to avoiding ATMs and carrying cash I guess.

Very bad situation if governments around the world spot this windfall opportunity - worse than the darn tourist tax in most cities in Italy - what a rip off - tourists bring in tons of money to local economies and get thanked by the local city council by taxing them for being there!

Furyleader

Have you attempt on using this card in Asia local atm ?, more sprecifically like at local 7-11 if you were charged with owner's atm fee? (i suppose they the card do not refund those back)

And if local bank actually waive their atm fees ?

jumperabv3

I only used it in Israel so far, when I get to Malta I would try it there and let you know ... in Israel owner's ATMs don't accept tourist / foreign cards, so you can only use a bank ATM.

Local banks in Israel don't charge fees from foreign / tourist cards.

joshwex90

This is accurate!

jumperabv3

He was (and I was) referring to an owner's ATM, it's not a regular ATM machine, it looks like this:



This type of ATM doesn't accept foreign cards.

joshwex90

You sure? My non-citizen friends have no problem using them (Jerusalem, Givat Shmuel, Tel Aviv) to withdraw ILS using American debit cards... I presume it's possible that it depends on the machine, but I can personally vouch for a number of them

jumperabv3

Well, I tried several of those in Tel Aviv with both UK and US cards - none worked!
Maybe a US debit card works, but I've never tried one, I only use credit-cards.

fvitterbi

Guys, BEWARE OF TDAMERITRADE's 0% fee advertisement. Their debit card DOES NOT work in many countries, at ALL.

I am in Mexico, I recently opened an account with TD Ameritrade in anticipation of working in Mexico. I spent weeks trying to take out money at ATM's here , in a huge city, not a small town, but kept getting weird errors like Funds not available or can't communicate with bank.

I spoke to 3 different service reps and wasted probably 15 hours of my time.
I finally spoke to Amanda Row , head of banking service. She told me that TD Ameritrade DOES NOT ALLOW ATM transactions in Mexico.

I was convinced that this made no sense because the city I am in has 10 million people, that's bigger than all but about 3 cities in the U.S. And this is a nice city, Maseratis and Mercedes cars, it's not the middle of Mexico.

So this is weird, I CAN use the card to buy items via "credit" in stores and buy items "online" here but I cannot do ATM transactions

so if you have to take out $1000 for example, you're stuck using one of the big banks that charges 3% or $30 for that ATM transaction.

I really feel completely defrauded because I spent a ton of time researching each broker and their fees and spent a ton of time with the application.

TD Ameritrade advertises 0% International transaction fees but then in Mexico, which shares 30% of its GDP with the U.S. or nearly $500 billion of transactions with Americans, TD Ameritrade's card is completely blocked.

And why would it be blocked for secure pin-entered ATM transactions but then work for Online and In-person Non-verified Credit card purchases.

And why does no one know about this? Seems like completely False advertising, something that could probably be investigated by the Department of Justice.

I have debit cards with Etrade, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, all have worked fine in Mexico, no problems at all. Even smaller banks.

I wonder in what other countries the TD Ameritrade debit card doesn't work?
Maybe in Russia and Eastern Europe?

They said Mexico is high on their "fraud model" but that makes no sense, are they just blocking huge countries so they can lower their chargeback rates while advertising that they provide 0% transaction fees? If you have 0 fraud and 0 service in other countries, Sure, charge 0%, the transactions never work, so no need to charge anything.

And honestly, the first few calls to them , the representative was completely unhelpful and had no idea of this rule. When I did finally speak to Amanda Rowe, she said yes, if I wanted to close my account that would be fine, really no attempt to empathize. I was surprised and very disappointed. I was going to move several hundred thousand dollars over to that TD Ameritrade account but now I'm probably going to close the account. I'm just surprised because Etrade goes out of their way to help you with these types of things, as do most of the online brokers and banks.

tmiw

It looks like the card has a Visa logo on it according to their website. My Schwab card (also with a Visa logo) worked at Scotiabank and HSBC ATMs when I was in Mexico recently. There was one ATM at the Puerto Vallarta airport where I also got the "unable to contact your bank" message but I forget what bank that was. I'd give one of those banks a try if you haven't already, but definitely wouldn't blame you if you cancelled--their customer service doesn't sound that good.

PackingIt

Has First Republic Bank been mentioned in this thread? They charge no fees to use their debit card at any ATM, and will reimburse all fees associated with using the card at ATMs. I've had no issues using the card in Central America and throughout Europe and parts of the Middle East.

tmiw

BTW it looks like Schwab did give me an ATM rebate for my Mexico trip after all. At current rates they refunded MXN$102.23. For reference the total fees/taxes/accidental opt-ins for the trip totaled MXN$111 (w/o that accidental opt-in it would have been MXN$101.50).

uds0

Thanks!

https://www.firstrepublic.com/person...ebate-checking

states that they require $3,500 average balance to avoid $25 monthly fee and they are located (branch) within only about a half dozen states.