A new fintech company which I was presented to earlier this year. How Much Currensea Card Send…
It has won a couple of awards over current months for what it does (offering you an affordable method to spend abroad) but what I like about is that it is simple as hell. This is a good thing.
is, successfully, a direct debit travel card. It is a Mastercard which sits between you and your existing current account. There is absolutely nothing to top-up or prepay. You just spend as you would on a normal debit card and the money is drawn from your current account– simply without the normal 3% cost.
Oh, and is complimentary to request, which also helps.
There are also some interesting travel benefits if you choose a paid strategy, however the totally free strategy works fine. You can apply here.
There is a service model in fintech which Curve, Revolut, Monzo etc have actually all followed:
launch by doing something well, and free of charge or less expensive than the competition
include increasingly more functions which your existing consumers don’t really want or need
include fees, charges or constraints to the feature that made people get your product in the first place, getting rid of any competitive advantage
is presently still in Stage 1 of this process and will hopefully stay there. Revolut, curve and monzo are already in Stage 3 …
is simple enough that it passes my ‘Can you discuss it to your mate in the pub in 30 seconds?’ test:
What countries can I use Currensea? How Much Currensea Card Send
It is a free direct debit card to use abroad and which automatically charges all purchases to your existing current account in Sterling, less a little 0.5% fee.
That’s it.
You don’t (yet …) earn any airline miles or points for using it.
Why would I wish to get a card?
If you have a credit card offering 0% foreign exchange costs, then you don’t require a card, unless you want totally free ATM withdrawals. You can stop reading now.
Credit cards which offer rewards and charge 0% FX costs are few and far in between. The only ‘miles and points’ options which offer a partial option are the Virgin Atlantic credit cards which have 0% FX costs in the Euro zone.
IS perhaps for you if:
you do not have a credit card offering 0% FX costs and do not want to affect your credit report by getting another credit card particularly to use abroad
you want an item which allows you to make �,� 500 of foreign currency ATM withdrawals each month with no charges and only a very little FX mark-up (there is a little fee beyond �,� 500).
you want a product for you, your adult children, moms and dads, partner or anyone else in your life who needs an easy, easy to understand payment card that will conserve them money when travelling.
How does operate in practice?
It is, as I stated earlier, an extremely easy procedure. You use your Currensea card in the same way as your existing debit card.
You make your purchase in local currency (any currency, worldwide).
Your bank account bank automatically validates that you have sufficient money in your account and authorises the deal.
The transaction goes through at either the interbank rate or the Mastercard rate, depending upon the currency. includes a 0.5% fee if you have the totally free card. If you have one of their paid cards, there are no costs.
You get an automatic invest notification through the app, if you pick to install it.
The cash is taken from your bank account a few days later on.
Here is an example. Without any foreign travel in the journal, I decided to sprinkle out and buy 1,000 MeliaRewards points for EUR5.
This is what you see in the Currensea app, which shows �,� 4.33 scheduled to leave my HSBC account a few days later:.
However transforming pounds was pricey.
A pet peeve of mine is when ATMs forewarn you about the daylight robbery that is just about to happen (frequently in a different language) while not telling you about the inflated currency conversion fees happening in the background. Do not get me started. Anyhow back to the positives for a bit anyway.
Thankfully in the last few years a handful of excellent travel debit cards have popped onto the scene … and like other great cards assures big cost savings (85%) and a great app.
However I believe the best bit might be what no other card does: connects to your existing high street checking account.
What this indicates is you can spend money you have in your existing current account with less worry about running out of cash and the additional action. That does not imply it is ideal.
In this Currensea evaluation is the excellent, the bad, the awful and the alternatives, so that you can decide.
FX markup.
While our premium strategies have no FX markup, we charge a nominal FX markup on our Important Plan of 0.5% per transaction, enabling us to make revenue from our Necessary Strategy whilst staying more affordable than other pre-paid cards and high-street debit cards. We also charge an FX markup on ATM usage over the free amount on all our plans, full details can be found on our rates strategies.
Subscription charges.
We charge a yearly subscription charge of �,� 25 for our Premium Strategy, and �,� 120 for our Elite Plan. The membership cost likewise eliminates all FX markup on deals.
Interchange.
Every time you invest with your card we receive a small % of the transaction, known as interchange, this comes directly from the merchant and won’t be credited you. How Much Currensea Card Send