I will be travelling from Spain to Prague at the end of the month to spend about a week. I notice on the internet that the official exchange rate vis-á-vis the Euro and the Koruna is roughly 27 to 1… I was wondering where the best place to exchange money is with least commission, etc.
At an ATM machine once arrived? At a local bank? At a local bank in Spain before departing? Thanks in advance for any advice or experience you have had.
Use your debit card to buy cash at an ATM. They are easy to find in Prague. Use your credit card to pay for any larger purchases and be sure to get your provider and not the vendor to do the conversion.
I was there last year - great place, lovely people. Some still can’t quite believe that the communists are gone.
Thank you. A couple of questions from an ignorant person (me).
I guess I am one of those rare persons who has not used ATM machines very much in my life. At an ATM machine there would be a difference in using a credit card or a debit card?
Making those purchases you mention, or most likely paying at restaurants with a credit card, how can I get my bank (provider?) and not the vendor to do the conversion? Not understanding exactly how this works.
Is your home country and card-issuing bank in Spain or some other country? I suspect so but it pays to ask.
If you do end up having to change money at a bureau de change, don’t do this at an airport. The rates will be much worse than changing money in town.
Praha! My favorite European city. I even went to school there for a year abroad.
Any ways, your best “bang for the buck” is to pull koruna from an ATM and pay in cash as much as possible. If you pull Euro, depending on the store/restaurant, they’ll do a EU to KR conversion and you’ll loose a little. If you use a credit card to pay, the exchange rate is wildly variable, some honest some not-so honest.
Using a credit card for a car rental or hotel is usually OK, you get the best rate for the day. It’s the small establishments that you’ll notice on the receipt that they are gouging you. So, be sure to inspect the receipt for that.
NEVER EVER exchange money at a kiosk or some dude on the street. CZE has some “old-world” tendencies and you can get ripped off. I forgot the other currency, Hungarian maybe, where they also use a Koruna and the bills looks almost identical but are worth 1/1000 of a CZE KR. From my semester abroad, another student thought he got an awesome deal 1:40 (US:KR) deal to find out he spend $300 for $1 worth of the other currency.
The guys who do this will start with something like $100 US or 100 EU with a slightly above average exchange rate, talk you up to several hundred for an even better exchange rate, and have a bunch of CZE KR small bills on stop of a stack of the larger denomination larger bills. You think you are golden, but, no, you wasted your money.
This is good advice for many parts of the world. Many areas, especially in the city and/or tourist hotspots, will take foreign currency. E.g. US currency in border areas of Canada, Euros in London, Yen in Hawaii, Swiss Francs in Campione, Italy. It’s not typically the best deal you can get, but it does get the job done if you just need a little something now while you continue to search for a better deal.
yes
It should be cheaper using a debit card instead of a credit credit card at a foreign ATM since there will be no service fee levied since the funds come directly out of your account. Also, the credit card will start charging you interest from the day the cash is withdrawn.
When you sign for your purchase, there will be a display that will allow you to choose either your provider’s rate, (which will be shown as the local country’s currency), or the vendor’s rate, (which is shown as your home currency). Letting your provider do the conversion is always the best choice in terms of getting the best exchange rate.
This:
Drawing foreign currency on a credit card is the same (to them) as drawing cash at home. If you, like me, clear your CC each month, drawing cash breaks the pattern and interest becomes due.
It may be worth asking your card issuers if they need to know that you are going to foreign parts. Sometimes it can be flagged up as a fraudulent transaction and the card frozen. I would also advise that you take at least two separate sources of credit and keep them apart, so that if one goes astray, you have a reserve.
If you use your credit card you’ll get charged a lot of interest.
But probably not if your account is in credit. Some people put a balance on their credit card before travelling and then use it to withdraw money at ATMs. This can be useful if your debit card isn’t on a common international network.
That will depend on the actual terms. Both of my Spanish banks start counting interest from the first of the next month: if you’re on “paid in full”, no interest. In most European ATMs I can also choose to withdraw from the linked account or put it on credit, when using the CC.
You may want to warn your bank before going, to make sure they won’t lock your cards for “suspicious activity”. My own banks are used to getting invoices from all kinds of places, but it’s taken me a while to train them.