Travel Money: The Fees That Are Yours to Control review

Travellers tend to think about money abroad as a matter of exchange rates, which are largely out of anyone's control, and to overlook the fees, which are almost entirely within it. The rate you get on any given Tuesday is what it is. The four charges below are decisions — and the difference between somebody who knows them and somebody who doesn't compounds across every purchase of a trip.

The first is the foreign transaction fee: a percentage your own card issuer adds to anything bought in another currency. It is small per transaction and invisible in the moment, which is exactly why it adds up unnoticed across a fortnight. Plenty of cards charge nothing at all, and finding out which of yours does is a two-minute look at your account terms before you pack. This is the single highest-return piece of homework in travel money, and it needs doing once.

The second is the ATM charge, which is really two charges wearing one coat. The machine's operator may levy a fee, displayed on screen before you confirm, and your own bank may levy its own on top, which is not displayed anywhere. Because both are usually flat amounts rather than percentages, the correction is behavioural rather than clever: take out larger amounts less often rather than small amounts repeatedly. Bank-affiliated machines inside a branch are generally cheaper than the standalone units in tourist areas, which exist precisely because people need cash where the fee is easiest to charge.

The third is dynamic currency conversion, and it deserves its own article — we have written one. In short: whenever a terminal or an ATM offers to charge you in your home currency, decline and choose the local one. The offer is framed as certainty and priced as a service, and the rate applied is set by the merchant's processor rather than by your card network. It is the one travel-money question that has no nuance attached.

The fourth is the spread on physical cash, which is where the largest single losses in this whole list happen. Airport exchange desks are not a rip-off in the criminal sense; they are a business selling convenience at the moment of maximum urgency, in a location with expensive rent and a captive audience, and they price accordingly. If you need a small amount of local cash on arrival, take it from a bank ATM rather than a desk. If you genuinely want cash in hand before flying, buy it at home, unhurried, from somewhere that competes.

Two habits sit underneath all four. Tell your bank you are travelling, or check that its app handles that automatically, because a card frozen for suspected fraud on day one is a more expensive problem than any fee. And carry a second card from a different network, stored somewhere other than your wallet — the failure this protects against is not theft alone but the ordinary one where a single card is declined at a machine in a town with no bank. None of this is financial advice about your circumstances; it is a list of four charges and where the decision sits on each. Your own account terms are the authority, and they are free to read.