How do you do purchases and withdraw money when on Holidays abroad?

The bank did take their share - but it was covered by the upfront UBS fee.

For SWIFT bank transfers, there’s three charge options:
OUR: payer/sender pays fees upfront, amount should be credited to payee’s/receiver’s account in full
BEN: the opposite: all transfer fees are paid by payee/receiver
SHA: split (though fees for SWIFT transfers will usually be higher than domestic)

Well, which card does (“always”)?

For me, Revolut has been quite reliable at ATMs.

And OUR/BEN are almost always > SHA (the advantage is that they’re more predictable).

I’m not sure that’s the right way to put it. :slight_smile:
Revolut “works”, some local banks are blocking it (some don’t even want to “open the mouth” of the card slot when they recognize it :rofl:).

For now I can confirm Croatia (HRK) and Spain/Canaries (EUR).
There you could only use it at the “international” Euronet/whatever ATMs, which force you to use their exchange rates and fees vs. you being able to withdraw local currency directly from your account.

Pissing off, yes…

really? Even if you use another card or just Revolut?

These banks/ATMs should be reported to MasterCard/VISA. At least as far as I know, the card networks don’t allow ATMs to reject individual card issuers. There was a similar issue with DKB VISA cards at Sparkasse ATMs in Germany and Sparkasse was forced to unblock DKB cards, if I remember correctly.

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Interesting!
I could try calling them out with VISA. :slight_smile:
But I wonder how much power they (VISA? Revolut?) have internationally - your case seems to have been between 2 banks of the same country.

Enough. But they usually don’t care about someone being unable to use his bank card somewhere.
The answer is usually to contact the card issuer.

Wait… you should have the right to be charged in the transaction currency (HRK, EUR), shouldn’t you?
But then, again, I have little doubt they’re steering or forcing you to currency conversion. And few if anyone cares about if they’re playing by the rulebook.

Probably, and Revolut can probably do close to zero in terms of “forcing” the banks to unblock their cards’ usage.

Even with being able to withdraw the local currency from my card (I don’t recall 100% as that case was last summer; I only recall I was pissed :sweat_smile:), Euronet seems to charge withdrawal fees.
Example here: Euronet ATMs: An Expensive Price for Convenience? - Portugalist (even a Euronet representative chimed in and tried to justify the fees :grin:)
They need to earn money in some way, I suppose, in the end.


Haven’t had any other one than my CH debit/credit card to try (and get stung by exchange fees).
Will test it out this summer with Wise.

I had once to convert 50k euro to chf and made a Revolut premium account for some months, so that I had not limits or fees on the conversion

I remember an Euronet ATM in Portugal. I think I wrote a post here as well. “Clearly written” is an euphemism. Once you say “No”, they will ask you again in a way that is confusing. Avoid.

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