I get paid in Euro, and some months of year I live in UK. I want to spend my Euro in UK without involving money conversion fee or foreign transaction fee. I’m looking for a way to conversion rate that apply from Euro to GBP will be MasterCard live rate, and no other money conversion fee or foreign transaction fee applies. I can open Euro account in UK in some UK banks, but how to convert these Euro to GBP with live MasterCard rate without any other fees?
Maybe some banks or financial institutes or digital banks can do this? What do you suggesting me?
You can’t beat Revolut on FX. All financial markets people in London have Revolut. MC live rate will never be better than interbank rate you get on Revolut since interbank is the best available.
Not strictly true. Interbank is live and constantly updated, while MasterCard is not live, meaning it can sometimes be cheaper and I’ve found real life situations where that is true
That’s true, but generally because the Visa/MC rates are 1-2 days delayed compared to interbank. See the graph in this post for a visual demonstration of this: Is Visa or Mastercard Cheapest Abroad? | Nomad Gate
I’m not saying you should opt for something else, just pointing out that interbank is not always the best, especially on weekends with the surcharges applied.
A good overall option would be revolut, just paying attention to convert money beforehand for weekend usage so as to avoid their weekend fx surcharge
That article may lead to a false conclusion, as Revolut charges the interbank rate at the moment of the transaction while N26 charges the MasterCard rates at the moment the transaction is “settled” which is about 3 days after. It could have easily have gone in the other direction
If you look at historical, statistically meaningful data, interbank is cheaper, tough as I previously mentioned you can at certain moments get a better rate from MasterCard.
When considering a single overall better solution revolut with interbank is best provided you can convert whatever amount you may need for the weekend and avoid the weekend surcharge. If you don’t think you can do that previous conversion, then N26 is best.
If you do anything that may be considered a freelance activity, you have N26 business (doesn’t require any proof that you actually have any such activity), which gives you 0.1% cashback, enough to offset the difference between MasterCard and interbank
In this particular case, yes. But there are many currencies you can’t currently hold. Also, with Revolut, when a transaction gets reverted (chargeback, returned items, etc) you are subject to losing a lot of money, because you won’t be credited back on your original exchange rate.
One single instance killed all my savings over N26 in three years.
Don’t get me wrong. Revolut is great, but it comes with many many pitfalls you need to be aware of. I’d prefer a real bank (N26) any day these days.
