In Reply to: Does anyone reccomend Cash Passport posted by kutareef on Tuesday, 26. May 2015 at 14:33 Bali Time:
Our experience of these currency cards is that they are a total rip off! We are regular travelers and were convinced by the marketing to buy one of these but had nothing but problems using them overseas in 2013 & 2014 and they have since been cut up!
The things to consider when you get them (all learnt from personal experience) are ...
1) Not all countries have freephone numbers for the help desk .. so if for example you are in Peru when things go wrong tough luck!
2) You can only get assistance by phoning the help desk .. emails are not accepted
3) You can't ring the help desk from a mobile phone .. try finding a working payphone in many countries!
4) The help desk will not ring you back on a mobile number .. try standing beside a payphone for 2hrs waiting for the promised "call back in 5mins"!
5) The help desk does answer your call 24/7 but any problems are only dealt with during office hours so don't expect a response to your problem on weekends or public holidays
6) If your card is skimmed overseas (happened to us right at the beginning of a 3 week trip & all $$ stolen) you won't get your money back until you fill out claim forms & provide evidence so this will likely be weeks after your return home! So that means even with one of these cards you still need to make sure you have access to alternative funds "just in case".
7) If you have a problem your funds will eventually be refunded however you then hit the issue of needing to withdraw the refund and of course when you use your card to withdraw $$ from ATMs in your home country = a large fee!!
6) In general the fees for these cards are very high & in particular we found the reload fees are not clearly represented in the terms & conditions and even bank staff said they could see 100% why we were shocked by the charges!
7) If you have multiple currencies loaded on the card we found that often the wrong currency gets deducted in error requiring multiple phone calls & hassles contacting help desk to correct as above
8) You soon discover that ATMs in each country only give out specific combinations of notes so you inevitably get left with small balances of each currency that you can't access or transfer without a fee!
My advice - don't touch these cards! When we travel to Bali we generally just take cash but as a back-up we have a separate debit card from our bank which we only use for travel. If we need money when travelling then we use secure online banking to transfer $$ from our main bank a/c into the travel account and then immediately withdraw this via ATM. This means there are never any funds to 'skim' and the fees work out a lot less than these cash passports.
Cheers
Sheryl