Good cards for foreign travel?
 

I'm new to this and was wondering what's a good card to use abroad?
I'd like to minimize exchange rate losses and ATM fees in Europe.

(I hope this is the right place to ask this question?)

Capital One Visa cards have no foreign exchange fee. Use it all the time. Ask you bank which partner bank in the country you are going to will not charge fees.

Different countries seem to prefer different cards. In Europe, you'll find Visa and Mastercard are accepted far more frequently than Amex or Diners. Having your card accepted is far more important than having fractions of percentages in the exchange rates - which change more from day to day than the difference between any two cards. If you want to minimize ATM fees then take out large amounts.

PenFed Visa use to be an ok foreign spending card netting you .25% cashback (1% FOREX fee, 1.25% general cashback).

The best card now is the Schwab Visa (although I believe new applications for the 2% general cashback is now closed). No FOREX fee too!

Outside of that, I believe more if not all CapOne cards do not charge a FOREX fee.

Google is your friend. Try "Credit Cards" "ATM" "Foreign Currency". About 1.3 million results.

:rolleyes:

How is 1.3MM search results helpful? I'd say it is entirely too much information to be useful, unlike the several quite helpful responses here.

I love that I got the Schwab card before they cut it off. :D

What does getting a Schwab card have to do with getting your bits removed ? :D

I got a 2% refund from the mohel?? No surcharge converting to shekels? :p

Thanks for the answers, everyone.

I'll talk to my banks to see if any of the debit cards might be fee-less, and maybe try to get a capital one credit card.