Should I Use My Credit Card Overseas? Credit Card vs. Amex Prepaid vs. Travelex
That is a good question. Of course, it depends. There are a number of credit cards out there that offer no foreign transactions fees, the normal 3% per transaction fee that most credit cards levy. Discover is one of them; however, it is not widely accepted around the world. I would have considered it for my recent trip to Paris if it could be used there, which it can't. Then I learned about the
, which doesn't have any fees. I tested this card out by loading a small amount of money from my bank account. Unfortunately, it took 5 business days in order for me to see the amount on the AMEX card! This is way too long to wait for funds, especially for a 10-day trip. The other disadvantage was that most merchants don't accept AMEX due to their higher merchant fees.
My next major issue involved convenience and security. Europe is way beyond the U.S. in regards to credit card security, as the
technology is ubiquitous there. This is not to be confused with the Chip and Signature technology now included in many U.S. credit cards. The Chip-and-PIN technology doesn't require any signature at all, as credit card transactions are processed reading the chip and having you enter a unique pin. This is the only way to process some transactions in Europe, such as at kiosques at train stations, toll booths, etc. Since I planned on taking the train from the airport upon my arrival and purchasing Metro tickets, I really wanted this type of credit card, as my whole goal is to avoid carrying any large amounts of cash.
That was when I discovered the
Travelex Cash Passport Prepaid Mastercard
, and boy was I happy I did! Not only could I load the card in Euros but it comes with Chip-and-PIN technology. And it is so quick and easy to load the card: all I had to do was go to their
, enter how much I want, and then use my own bank's debit card to process the transfer. The best part of all was that funds became available almost immediately! This was so convenient when I was in Paris and wanted to add more funds before my card ran out, which happened pretty quickly since I ended up using this card for
everything.
I never had to use cash, as even taxis accepted it. And forget about waiting in line. Since other tourists had no luck with their cards at the kiosques for the train and buying tickets at the Louvre, they would leave frustrated only to cut my wait short so that I could use my card with no issues at all. Another advantage was that all restaurants had hand held card readers, so my card never left my sight as the servers would bring the reader to my table, insert my card, I would enter my pin, and it would print a receipt. Talk about secure (not having to see a stranger walk away with your card like in the U.S.)! And speaking of, it was so easy to
and view my remaining balance, including recent authorizations, and they have a tricky secure way of confirming your login by confirming only certain digits of your password. On a final note, while there are no foreign transactions fees or other transaction fees, you will be subject to Travelex's exchange rate at the time of the conversion when adding new funds. Of course, this varies according to currency exchange fluctuations and I tend to think that the rate may be a little higher with Travelex, but let me tell, for the cost of convenience and security, it is totally worth it! I will definitely use this card when I return to Europe in the near future.
Travel International Data: Tep Wireless vs. T-Mobile Unlimited Data vs. Verizon Global vs. Telestial
As a small business owner and a geek who also loves to travel internationally, I still want to stay in contact with my clients, even though I usually don't do any work while on vacation. I love all my mobile devices and being always connected is a priority for me, even if just to find the nearest restaurant while in a foreign locale. Over the past the year, I have scoured the internet for reviews and tried solutions to having a data connection in Europe without paying an exorbitant amount.
This all started with a trip to Italy planned way in advance with my family. Being away for 2 weeks, I needed as much data as possible for the lowest cost and best convenience for multiple devices. I found out about
after reading an
For just over a hundred bucks, I booked a WiFi device with unlimited data (kind of a misnomer as there is a cap) to be shipped from London to my home a day or two before I flew out on my trip. Now here's the bad news: I waited until the day before my trip only to not receive any device. When I emailed tep, they basically indicated that my order fell through the cracks and that they, of course, wouldn't be able to ship my device to the US. Instead, they offered to ship it to my location in Italy. Unfortunately, I was going to be staying in a villa in a remote area of Umbria where I didn't even have an address yet, only GPS coordinates. So I canceled my order. To make matters worse, when I got back, they made it so difficult to get my money back that I ended up disputing the charge with my credit card company.
Okay, so since I didn't have enough time to order a device from another company, I tried the next best thing. I activated the Global Data plan with my wireless carrier Verizon, which costs $25/month, with the first month including 100mb of data and each additional 100MB of data used costing $25. 100MB is not a lot, especially when I consume up to 2GB on my smartphone each month, but I also stream music and upload all my photos. Therefore, just to be safe, I installed the
My Data Manager app for Android
to keep track of how much data I was using and what apps were using it. Along with having WiFi at the villa, this was a lifesaver. Of course, I had to turn off any background syncing on all my apps, such as Facebook, Google+ and tweak my email settings. This actually worked out pretty well, but of course, I had to do a lot of work managing and restricting what I normally do. The only issue I had was with my phone's weather widget, which got stuck in some updating loop at the end of the trip and used up 80MB in one night.
After I got back, T-Mobile announced that they would be offering unlimited international data with their plans in the near future. I was intrigued. I had T-Mobile as my carrier in the past before switching to Verizon, and while I hated their customer service, I figured I could just buy a SIM and use this for a short time and then cancel. So a month before my next trip, I bought a SIM and a basic plan online. Since they activated the service even before I inserted the SIM in my phone, I figured I would try it out. Once I had it in my phone and switched networks, I opened up my browser and tried a web page. I was shocked to find out that it took a minute and counting for just Yahoo! to load. I was no longer on 4G and not even on 3G but rather on T-Mobile's Edge network. We are talking
slow,
2G speed. At first, I thought it was just the band limitations of my phone. But after researching online, I discovered that T-Mobile's unlimited data in Europe is actually limited to
Standard speeds approx. 128 Kbps.
OMG, that takes me back to the 90's! That's about twice the speed of dial up! You basically can't do anything with this except wait hours for all your email to get downloaded. I'm glad I was able to test this out before leaving the country as it gave me an opportunity to cancel and ship my SIM back to T-Mobile. I am already back from my trip and I'm still trying to resolve my billing with them as the first agent I talked to never pro-rated my bill and gave me wrong information so it went into collections. I'm surprised this carrier is still in business with such bad customer service.
Fortunately, this experience gave me enough time to make another choice. I have heard of Telestial
before in my past searches, but by searching again, I discovered that they had a great new product, perfect for my needs. They now offer a
, which allows you to get on a 3G network (if available) in over 50 countries around the world. Keep in mind that this is only a data plan and it doesn't provide any voice or text capability, which I didn't need anyway since I use Google Voice and Voipo. For only $99, you get 1GB of data for 30 days. That's less than 0.10 per MB! What made this even better was their
that allows you to track how much data you have used and even recharge your data if you use up the first 1GB.
I purchased one online and it arrived with no problem, just a simple package with a SIM card and a pocket info card. After inserting the SIM, it was very easy to set up the APN for my phone to recognize the SIM and connect to a network. When I arrived in Spain, I was anxious to see this work and was probably too hasty to connect that I tried to manually connect to each of the Spanish networks available. But perhaps it was just trying to activate at the same time, so once I switched back to automatic network, it was connected to the best available network and I was on the internet with no problem. The same was true when I arrived in France. It connected to a network immediately and I was getting 3G with no problems. Even though I had WiFi in my Paris apartment, it was great to be able to use Google Maps, search for restaurants via TripAdvisor, and check my email or surf the internet all over the city, even in the Metro. I also
love
their app! It shows you how much data you are using (and in which country), gives you weather info, and even has a currency converter. Overall, my whole experience using this company was excellent. Now, I can relax knowing that my next international trip will be worry free and all I have to do is recharge my existing SIM. Beautiful!