A Review Of The South African Rand Travelex Passport
You can see much fluctuation in rates for travel money depending on a number of factors. How do you find the best rates for your money? What undisclosed fees might be lurking in the bill? Will the South Africa Rand Travelex Cash Passport provide you with the value you want to see when you're traveling?
There is no such thing as a commission-free exchange rate.
To begin with, you don't want to place your confidence in the commission-free travel money myth. Too many people believe that a zero commission rate translates into a zero exchange rate margin – and that there won't be any additional charges. This is absolutely false! When you're making your travel plans, you should check the currency exchange rates and foreign exchange fees before you order any travel money.
What is a foreign exchange price, and why is it important?
Let's say you're heading to South Africa and make a quick stop on the way or you have some money left on your travelex card when you make it home – in either case, you'll probably use your card beyond South Africa's borders. Using the card outside of South Africa means you'll have to pay the Travelex Cash Passport foreign exchange fees. If you have £500 left on your Rand card that you want to cash in, you'll have to pay a fee of £28.75 just to get your money back!
Exchange rates for Rand from Travelex
The rand currency exchange rates charged by Travelex will depend on the location you've selected to use for adding or removing money from your cash passport card. If you purchase your money via an online vendor, it's likely that you'll be getting a better deal and definitely a better one that you would have gotten from any airport. Just how good are the better prices, and how poor are the airport rates from Travelex?
We did a little investigation of the Travelex Cash Passport rates, selecting 11:30 a.m. on 12th May 2010 as a random sample, and discovered the following:
The online selection allowed you to add to your Travelex Cash Passport Rand card at 10.752 rand to one pound sterling, near but not equal to the interbank exchange rate of 11.2087 being offered at that same time as listed on XE.com. In other words, Travelex was enforcing a 4.07% margin charge. Clearly, you are not getting your travel cash commission free.
But if you instead chose to charge your card at Heathrow airport on that same date, you would have received 10.1527 rand per pound sterling which is 9.42% less than the interbank exchange rates that were being reported by XE.com. If you had exchanged £2000 of sterling to rands at that pound rand exchange rate, Travelex would have made a profit of £188.40. This doesn't include the additional fee of 5.75% when a person attempts to take out surplus funds after arriving back home.
Based on this information, the Travelex card does not seem like the best option.
Even though this particular card, the Rand Travelex Cash Passport, isn't a great value, is not to say that a travel money card isn't a good idea in general. We've checked out lots of different money card options and the one stand out in all of them is the FairFX Anywhere Card.
What makes the FairFX Anywhere Card so much better?
The travel money value of the FairFX Anywhere Card is unmatched by any of the others. Their exchange rates run at roughly .25% away from the interbank exchange rates and they do not slap you with any foreign exchange fees. There is a one-time 1.5% transaction charge that is employed with ATM withdrawals and buys. There is never any fixed, separate ATM cost.
Can you really save a lot of money by using the FairFX Anywhere Card?
Let's take another look at that £2000, but this time with the FaixFX Anywhere Card: you'd keep an additional £46.40 over the Rand Travelex online exchange and an unbelievable £153.40 more than the Rand Travelex exchange at Heathrow airport. (The precise amount of money you end up saving will be entirely contingent upon exchange fees, but this article offers a pretty accurate picture of what you could save.)
Find a better deal on south africa travel money: shop around to cut down on your expense.
Tags: Finance, money, travel, Travel Tips