1.Re: Credit/debit card or cash?
7 years ago
The Dutch banks mostly do not charge anything over the bid-offer prevalent for interbank exchange rate at the time you withdraw any money from an ATM belonging to say ABN Amro Bank. The bid-offer itself can move, ie you can be unlucky and exchange rate move away from you compared to today, but that's a different issue and you can not plan for it much.
Thus any charges levied for your transactions tend to be made by your home bank - for the overseas use, overseas ATM use, service charges, fees for being a customer, fees for just like that and so on.
So, if you upfront ensured that your bank has no unnecessary charges to be levied when you are abroad, then you will have lot less charges. But depends on your bank.
Some banks such as Bank of America (in the USA) have a 15% or higher spread over the middle exchange rate, if you change in advance, ie buy Euro from them. That becomes horribly expensive if too much money (like 800-1000 USD changed). Same would be for GBP-EUR or any other currency exchange beforehand. You may pay 8-10% over the interbank rate at the time you change money.
In contrast, many banks with credit and debit cards for traveling, have deals for their customers where they do not charge ATM fees, overseas fees and so on for travelers, Some even give cash back to select customers. Some like Capital One, Santander etc. offer excellent travel products. For those people using these bank products, there is pretty excellent experience overall.
So it is pretty much dependent on which bank you bank with, what product you buy/have and what are the fine prints for using the card.
