My friend is taking a backpacking trip through Europe and I want to give her some money to take with her. Should I just convert some money to Euros and give her that? Can I buy an American Express gift card with Euros on it instead of dollars? I don’t want her to have to worry about the exchange rate.
Give her money to put in her bank account, and she can withdraw what she needs in the currency she needs from ATMs. Yes, there will be some fees associated, but if she’s traveling in some countries that use the Euro and some that don’t, she’ll have to pay fees anyway.
Generally the ‘best’ way to spend money in another country is by credit card, because you will receive the exchange rate that the bank gets, which is a heck of a lot better than you get at the foreign exchange window in the airport. Based on that, I would think that a Visa/MasterCard/American Express gift card would be the way to go, assuming that they are valid for use overseas. It seems that some are, and others are not…
Just put it in her bank account. She’ll probably have to pay ATM fees (check with your bank) but that beats the safety risk of carrying wads of cash. The bank will offer good exchange rates.
Travellers cheques are still widely accepted and a small sum thereof are a good backup in case she loses her credit or ATM card.
Don’t buy Euros in the USA… you’ll never get nearly the rate that you can get overseas. Also, don’t change at the airport… or only a small amount if you really need it.
Personally, I’d always prefer that someone puts money into my account for me; but is it possible you could wait until she’s already been travelling for a while, and may be running low? My partner’s mum used to occasionally slip the odd note into our account if she was at the bank while we were away (and very, very poor), and it used to make us so happy. Though you might want to drop her a little “have a look at your balance!” message so she won’t worry about spending the bank’s error.
It’s kind of a combination birthday/going away present, so I want to give it to her before she leaves. Probably the American Express gift card would be most appropriate and practical. It’s too bad I can’t buy, for example, a 35 Euro gift card, so the value is fixed at the time I purchase it. I can do a $50.00 gift card, but who knows how much it’s going to be worth by the time she gets there?
If you were talking a larger sum I’d worry about exchange rates but for 50 euro you can easily get that in cash and hand it over to her. Your talking losing a dollar or two on the exchange.
So how would you get money over to europe to a foreign national? If for example I wanted to send a friend of mine some money to buy some item that is unique to elbonia or wherever? Obviously sending cash through the mail is right out … and I would really hesitate to send a gift visa. is there something that a bank can generate like a money order that the money is pretty much instantly available to the person?
Just use Western Union.
Pay cash into her account - she can withdraw via ATMs if she’s willing to take a hit on the bank charges. Also, if she is considering taking dollars and exchanging them, some of the best rates for hard currency conversions are the bureaux de change on the street. We did this in Hungary recently and got a much better rate than we could have got in the UK for a sterling exchange, and better than the airport offered.
to be honest I would have never thought of Western Union, though until I hit google, I would have no idea where it would be located here out in the sticks. I always associate it with bus station sin delappidated skeevy parts of a city…
There are a couple of offices in the less salubrious but not wholly unpleasant parts of Oxford. I bought a photograph from Vietnam and used the over-the-counter service to wire the photographer the money - it all worked out fine.
Paypal is also a decent way to get money to someone abroad.
You’d be surprised at the places where they have Western Union. It’d always shock me when I’d pull into some one-road Cameroonian town and see that familiar Western Union logo.
You’re probably going to be better off purchasing Euros BEFORE you give her the card. The exchange rates on credit cards and ATMs, in my experience have been much higher.
In fact, I recently bought something from Germany and it was cheaper for me to buy an online gift card and pay the rate of exchange there, then it would be to use my Visa Card from Chase.
It wasn’t that much cheaper but five bucks is five bucks.
One thing to be aware of if it’s a large amount of money, you may have to go through a lot of identification stuff, because of the money laundering laws and such.