Making international money transfers from your country of residence is a pretty straightforward affair these days. Apart from banks, you can use the services of a number of international money transfer companies to remit money abroad from the comfort of your home. The fact that there is a large number of service providers to choose from allows you to obtain very favourable terms for your money transfer. All you need to do is to compare the terms offered by several of them and choose the ones that suit your requirements the most.
However, when you are travelling abroad, you may be a little unsure of the payment methods that would best suit your purposes. Let’s get some clarity about that over here:
1. Bank Wire Transfer
You have the option of initiating a wire transfer via your bank to an individual or organization while traveling abroad. You can also transfer money to yourself, which you can pick up in the country you are going to be traveling in. While this may be a convenient and secure way of funding your overseas travel, it is likely going to be more expensive than other methods of making international payments. Besides, wire transfer payments are slow to arrive.
2. Prepaid Debit Card
A prepaid debit card that allows international transactions is a great way of making payments or withdrawing cash when traveling abroad. As the name suggests, you need to load the required amount of money beforehand to enable you to use it as per your convenience during your time abroad.
However there are some costs involved in using a prepaid debit card that you may want to factor in before you consider using one during your overseas travel. You will have to pay an activation fee as well bear a 1 to 3% charge for every transaction you make. Plus there is a monthly fee too and not making a transaction for six months may lead to a charge too.
3. Credit Card
Using a credit card to take care of your expenses while traveling abroad is certainly a very convenient and hassle free experience, provided you are carrying one which allows international transactions. The disadvantage in using a credit card to meet your expenses while traveling overseas is that a 1 to 5% charge may be levied on every transaction you make. This makes it quite an expensive proposition over a period of time.
There are however international credit cards that do not levy any charge on foreign transactions and it makes sense to use that kind of credit card for your monetary transactions, when traveling abroad.What’s more by using a credit card you can also reward points that can be redeemed later, or that offer as much as 2% cash back like the Sofi Credit Card – see it here.
4. Online Money Transfers
There are a large number of overseas online money transfer services available these days, which allow you to remit the sum of your choice into the currency of the country you will be visiting. The money can either be sent to someone or to yourself. What’s great about this way of funding your overseas travel is that you can do it in no time by going online or using an app.
The only expenses that you incur by using this method of payment is a transaction fee (1 to 3% of the transaction amount) and depending on the provider, the margin on the exchange rate. Some of the best online remittance services include; WorldRemit, TransferWise, TorFX and OFX.
Conclusion
Traveling abroad these days is no longer the intimidating experience that it once used to be and the ability of easily arranging the required funds has a lot to do with that. The fact that one can use digital means to make international money transfers has made the process that much simpler and cheaper.