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“No Problems! Loved not keeping so much cash on me.”

written by chelynnah on 14/12/2015

I'm in the UK and instead of buying cash this time for our 2 week Florida trip we saw the Travelex Multi-Currency Cash Passport and thought it would be a good idea, as I often visit 'home to Canada (with short trips into the US as my family lives on the border) and we sometimes make short trips to Europe from here as well. It sounded like a great solution to having all these spare currencies floating around after trips. The online rate was better than the Post Office. No charges for purchases or withdrawals (aside from those charged by the ATM bank), no Non-sterling transaction fees etc, it seemed perfect.

Then I read the reviews here and panicked. We'd already purchased it, so not much we could do but hold our breath and see how it panned out. We brought along some extra US cash to start which we already had left over from our last trip, and we could always use our credit cards or debit cards if necessary. We also had read that people had success with the company providing their finds locally through Western Union when stuck, so we figured we should be ok.

I set up the online account, and iPhone app so we could keep track of the balance and no issues there, so fingers were crossed for the trip.

Our original plan was to use it simply as a cash card, but I decided to test it out in all scenarios. Our first day there I used it as a charge card at a small kiosk in an outlet mall. I figured if we'd have trouble charging anywhere it would be something like that. Everything went through fine..

A couple of days later we hit up an ATM for cash, again, no trouble. Straight forward transaction, with a small charge being advised from the ATM provider before finalising. We made a couple of charges on it for some things we would have paid cash for when we got a bit low, and made 2-3 more ATM withdrawals through the trip. All with no hassle. Checking in on the app or in a browser were simple, and everything clearly recorded.

We didn't top up the amount as we didn't need to any more, but if we had, the rate was still fair, and no charges for doing so with the multi-currency card. We were able to actually (including the ATM fees) use all the money we had loaded bar about 25 cents. I know they start charging if you don't use it for over a year, but they only charge while there's money on it, so worst case scenario, they can have that :).

so in this instance it worked perfectly, and I have no reason to think it won't on further trips to the US. I plan to test it on my next trip 'home' to Canada early next year, but I'm not expecting any issues there. After some reviews, I'm a little more nervous about tripping it in Europe, but I'm thinking bigger countries should be ok, so if we cross to France I'm thinking we should be fine, but I will probably test it out taking 1/2 cash and half on the passport to be safe.

However based on my recent experience had I not read any of the previous reviews on this site I wouldn't be concerned at all with it, was very pleased, and it really did make our trip a lot smoother not having to carry so much cash, or have to pay a Non-sterling transaction fee on every bank withdrawal as we have in the past when just drawing cash from our UK accounts

So currently on our recent experience, the Travelex Multi-Currency Cash Passport gets 5/5

I hope every one else has this experience moving forward.