analyst

Well, not strictly true, the account and card stays but . . . from November Nationwide BS is pulling the plug on their most attractive "free foreign transactions" deal which I know many people use to shift money around without the punitive foreign transaction loading applied by other banks or cards.

Tis a shame, will have to use another 'workaround' in future.

Im_and_Er

Not so easy for non UK residents so it will be interesting to see what you come up with

cyrian

From the Nationwide BS website:
Nationwide continues to offer "commission-free" foreign transactions.

"Commission-free" means that we do not add any additional charges for exchanging currency which are designed to generate profit for the Society. We do, however, pass on any fee we incur from our card scheme providers for processing transactions in certain currencies (generally those outside of the European Economic Area and Turkey and Israel) other than sterling.

The fee is currently 1.00% and it will be included in the sterling amount shown on your statement.

The list below provides details of the countries for which a fee is charged. To check if you will be charged, please search for the country you are visiting by using the A-Z list. Unless stated otherwise a fee will be charged.

If you have any other questions regarding these charges, please phone 08457 30 20 10 or talk to an advisor at one of our branches.

Please note:
From 1 November 2010 we will introduce a commission charge and a cash withdrawal charge for transactions in currencies other than sterling. These will still be among the lowest in the market and will replace the existing 1% fee for transactions made outside the Visa Europe region. For full details please visit the FlexAccount changes section of our website.

Please note that this says "for transactions made outside the Visa Europe region.

Im_and_Er

I think you have the wrong end of the stick

http://www.nationwide.co.uk/mediacen...is.asp?ID=1590

cyrian

Think you might be right

analyst

Get a different stick?

Anyway, back to the plot.
I can come up with "something" but it may not help you guys resident out there too much.

There are some cards which can be "pre-loaded" at the home end, which allow commission free conversions. And since it is "pre-loaded" you are withdrawing your own money so there will be no cash-advance fee.

Now, when my daughter was studying for a year at Univ. of Bordeaux I took out a joint account with her (Nationwide BS of course) so we each had a card. So I would load money in at UK end and she would take it out of a cash machine at her end . . . usually at a faster rate than I could load it in :curse:

Best I can do for now, but as Arnie said, "I'll be back"

Im_and_Er

You might want to check your research because I think you'll find that cash withdrawals attract fees.

From http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/tra...-money#prepaid in regard to the FairFX card, the cheapest of the bunch.

"The only cost is €1.50/$2 to withdraw cash from an ATM"