Debit card with no exchange fee

[SpringBaby72]

My 17 year old daughter is going to New York in February with school. They need spending money and money for meals. Does anyone know of a card that I can put money on for her (with no fee for exchange from £ to $)?

What about a Revolut card, I've used this on holidays where I've needed use and euros. It's easy to top up and transfer to different currencies on the app.

Monzo or Starling, both work great. My 16 year old has Monzo and I have Starling

I second revolut card. Make sure you do the currency exchange during the week as its cheaper than the weekend.

The Post Office do a travel money card. No fees when using abroad - you load it in the currency you want to use so USD and your daughter can withdraw cash or use it contactless. You can use a physical card or have one in your digital wallet. We've used one for a child who was travelling and it was easy to top up in whichever currency they needed.

Wise card
no fees
Easy to use

My son goes to university in the USA he uses his Starling bank account. That is all he has used for the last 3 1/2 years.

Chase bank. Free to take cash out of their ATMs in the US too. I have the account in my name but loan the card to the DCs for school trips. I only ever have holiday money in there.
We used to have the Post Office cards but they were a pain to use and also had a minimum amount to transfer at a time. With the Chase account, I am free to transfer money across as and when needed.

DD, then 16, got a Starling account. Worked for Euros but haven't checked dollars. MoneySavingExpert has a guide.

My son uses his in the USA, debit card and free atm withdrawal except USA banks charge around $3 for all withdrawals even for Americans.

Starling/Revolut/Monzo pretty much all the same. I'd recommend Starling as Revolut charge you for a card and I think Monzo have some fees

Starling

Can’t recommend Monzo enough for travelling and have been all over the US with it. It’s also particularly handy when travelling with others who have them.

I went with a friend and when buying tickets, paying for food, cabs etc rather than fucking about manually working out what your half is one person can just pay and then tap “split cost” on the app, select the relevant contact(s) and it just works out the equal cost and sends a notification to their phone asking them to accept and when they do their equal share is just taken from their account and instantly transferred to yours. Me and my mate would just go on our apps at the end of every day and send whatever split requests we had to each other and it was just all sorted without going through and doing manual long winded transfers.

We all have Nationwide accounts and never had issues. DD has an account with them since she is 11 and her debit card worked in the US and Europe.

You won't need a lot of cash in NY, DH only needs them to tip the housekeeping, everything else is card payment.

Highly recommend Revolut. Kids can add app to their phones for ApplePay and / or have a physical card. Easy for them or us to add funds to the account and exchange to foreign currencies. Exchange rates are very good and no commission or charges.

Nationwide charge a non-sterling fee on every foreign transaction. which can add up to a lot over a holiday.

Chase, there are alsochase ATM’s on every street.

It may depends on the account type, I just checked my statement from Summer and there was no non-sterling fee payable.

AFAIK while Revolut, Monzo and Starling are all FCA regulated, only money held in Monzo and Starling is protected under the FSCS. No such protection applies yet to Revolut, though the amounts at risk for a prepay debit card are low. I believe Revolut are in the process of trying to get a full banking licence and FSCS protection for all accounts, but at present almost all of their accounts are not protected as previously they were just regulated as an electronic money institution, and have not transferred existing accounts or all products to the new licence.