Credit card with good FX rates globally

Is there a mustschian option for a guy who is travelling a lot outside of Europe (mostly Mexico) and needs a Swiss credit card to cheaply pay abroad? Or maybe there’s some better way than credit card?

But what is wrong with Revolut?

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Good question, I’m not sure if it works in Mexico, but besides, I need an alternative to it, in case it doesn’t work or I’ll have any other issues with accessing the money.

I’m pretty sure Revolut will work. I used it even in Bermuda :wink:. In any case you can just take some CHF in cash as backup and on the first day try to withdraw Mexican Pesos with Revolut (up to the 200 EUR limit). If it doesn’t work, you can exchange your CHF cash. As last resort you can just use your regular credit card. That’s what I’ve been doing.

In Israel, I have not even held a Shekel in my hand, every payment done with Revolut. There I had trouble withdrawing money using Revolut, but the payments worked. Btw in Israel it’s like in USA. Every transaction with swipe and signature, and 15% tip in restaurants :cold_sweat:.

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I’d suggest USD as backup. Better rates.

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Agree about have some USD in cash & Revolut/N26 for payments (I haven’t tested N26 in Mexico personally but I think it should work).
I haven’t found yet a VISA Revolut/N26 that would nicely complement them.

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And I’d suggest Mexican Pesos, even better! Where are you gonna get dollars? If you exchange CHF to USD in Switzerland and then USD to MXN in Mexico, you gonna get ripped off twice.

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I’m not an FX expert, but I’m pretty sure that if you try to get Mexican Pesos in Switzerland, you’ll get some markup since it’s not liquid enough. The best plan is probably to transfer your money to Revolut and withdraw at the airport :slight_smile:
Try to go there at the end of the month so you can get double amount for free :smiley:

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I was being sarcastic (sorry). Of course USD would be a better choice to take to Mexico, but where do you get USD from? I think you’re missing the point. We begin with CHF. How do we get MXN? I’m saying: take CHF to Mexico, exchange there. That’s what I did in Dubai, and the exchange rates for CHF were not so bad.

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Well, we should test what you say, but if I were a mexican bank, I would make a bad exchange with CHF because no one there wants it (or not?). Instead a competitive one with USD.
So it might be better chf->usd->mxp half here half there than chf->mxp in mexico.
You missed my point. :smiley:

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I’m not sure if a bank will give you best rates. I would probably try a shopping mall.

How did I miss your point? You just repeated what I wrote in my post. The thing is, I would only take the CHF as a backup in case Revolut doesn’t work. If you want to exchange CHF to USD (where? I only know SBB and some places at the airport, everything has crap rates), then you would have dollars which you might not even need.

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The thing is that one can keep the USDs as one’s travel emergency cash no matter where one is going.

Here, 1000000CHF would only be only hit with the double FX rate if something happens.
He’s doing CHF to USD and maybe USD to MXN if something happens. If all goes well he is left with a very fluid currency that is usable everywhere, maybe for another trip next month, and easy to exchange.
If he does CHF to MXN and nothing happens he’ll have to do MXN to CHF and be hit by the double FX rate.
If we assume that there won’t be an issue with Revolut I think it is safer to go with the first option.

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If Revolut is not an issue, then you don’t need to exchange CHF to MXN in the first place… But I see the point. Having some USD for all future trips to come. Still, can you exchange CHF to USD for a fair price? An alternative would be to withdraw Euros at one of the ATMs in Switzerland. Euros should also have good exchange rates. Not as good as dollars, but still.

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EUR could be good for European travels to countries like the UK or our beloved Poland for instance :wink:

I think City Change or Migros Change are OK rate wise.

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The only cheap option that comes to my mind is to open a USD account in PostFinance and send money there from IB, but seems a bit overkill to keep some emergency USD for travel. :sweat_smile:

In that case it would be even cheaper to send pesos to Mexican bank account from IB. :slightly_smiling_face: By the way, do you actually do that with EUR and PLN in your case?

How would you withdraw though? You think they would give you USD in a PF branch? Come to think of it, when I first exchanged PLN to CHF on Cinkciarz, I went to the Citibank branch in Poland and they just gave me the CHF cash.

I found the rates at Migros Bank website:

https://www.migrosbank.ch/de/privatpersonen/konto-und-karte/fremdwaehrung.html

So they will sell you 1 USD for 1.0200 CHF. They will buy 1 USD for 0.9500 CHF. Current mid exchange rate is 0.9850. That’s like 3.5% lost.

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I’ve used Revolut in Mexico without problems.

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You can ask PF to send USD to your address. I’ve done that before and worked well.

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I suppose it’s still quite a bit better than getting robbed at travelex or some other shithole with 10%+ spread,

And you’ll similarly pay a few percent for the privilege. Handling of illiquid foreign cash is expensive.

Cheapest usually is just to withdraw from an ATM in your destination country.

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