Money

Six mistakes people make getting foreign cash

The rate on the screen is almost never the rate you get. Each of these quietly takes a slice of your holiday money, and all six are avoidable in about ten minutes.

Published 12 September 2026.

The TripChecker passport mascot putting a card into a cash machine
1

Letting the machine convert it for you

When a card machine or cash machine abroad offers to charge you in pounds instead of the local currency, that is dynamic currency conversion, and it is the most expensive button on the screen. Accepting it hands the exchange rate to the shop or the ATM operator rather than to Visa or Mastercard, and they set it in their favour.

The Norwegian Consumer Council measured markups averaging 7.6 per cent and reaching 12.4 per cent above the official card rate, and concluded that customers came off worse in 99.7 per cent of cases. Between half and six in ten travellers accept it anyway, partly because the pounds option is often the bigger, greener, more reassuring button. Retailers typically take a cut of around 1 per cent of the transaction, which is precisely why you get asked.

What to do: always choose the local currency. Every time, in shops, restaurants and cash machines alike. If a terminal has already jumped to pounds, ask for the transaction to be cancelled and run again in local currency, which staff are obliged to do.
2

Buying currency at the airport

Airport bureaux and airport cash machines are the most expensive place in the country to get foreign money, because they are selling convenience to people who have run out of alternatives.

A case published by Which? in July 2026 makes the scale of it concrete. A traveller withdrew €300 at Gatwick and was charged £338.94, an effective rate of about £1.13 per euro. Over the previous five years the pound had never been weaker than roughly £0.90 to the euro. He had glanced at a displayed rate of £0.8851 and assumed it was normal, when in fact the rate was quoted the other way round.

What to do: if you need cash the moment you land, order it before you travel and collect it, or withdraw from a bank cash machine once you arrive. And always check which way round a quoted rate runs: work out what your £100 actually becomes before you hand it over. Our Xchange Checker shows the real mid-market rate so you have something to compare against.
3

Travelling with a card that charges you to exist abroad

Most ordinary UK debit and credit cards add a foreign transaction fee of roughly 3 per cent to everything you spend overseas, then a separate cash withdrawal fee on top when you use an ATM. On a two-week holiday that is a meaningful sum for no benefit whatsoever, because cards without those charges exist and cost nothing to hold.

There is a second trap specific to credit cards. Withdrawing cash on a credit card usually starts accruing interest from the day of the withdrawal, with no interest-free period, even if you clear the balance in full at the end of the month. A card can be excellent for spending abroad and still be a poor way to get cash out.

What to look for rather than any particular product: no foreign transaction fee, no fee on ATM withdrawals abroad, and conversion at the Visa or Mastercard rate rather than the provider's own. Check your existing cards first, in the app or the terms, because you may already hold one that qualifies. Credit cards also give you Section 75 protection on purchases over £100, which debit cards do not.
4

Not knowing which cash machine you are standing at

Not all ATMs are run by banks. Independent operators, the ones you meet most often being Euronet, Travelex, Cardpoint, Cashzone and YourCash, run a large share of the machines in airports, stations, resorts and old-town tourist streets. They charge their own withdrawal fee on top of whatever your bank charges, and they push currency conversion harder than anyone.

They are frequently sited right beside a bank's own machine, and some carry signs promising free withdrawals that refer only to the operator waiving one specific charge. A machine bolted to the wall of an actual bank branch, with that bank's name on it, is almost always the cheaper option.

What to do: walk the extra two minutes to a bank branch. Read the fee disclosure screen instead of pressing through it, since the machine has to show you the charge before you confirm and you can still cancel at that point. And where a flat fee applies, one larger withdrawal beats four small ones, so take out what you need for several days rather than topping up daily.
5

Having no backup when a card is lost or blocked

Fraud systems block cards for looking unusual, which is exactly what your spending does on holiday. Add a lost wallet, a machine that swallows a card, or a hotel that will not release a deposit, and a single card becomes a single point of failure a long way from home.

The version of this that really strands people is subtler: the card is blocked, unblocking it requires a security code by text, and the phone cannot receive texts on that network. Now you cannot pay and cannot fix it.

What to do: carry two cards from different providers, ideally on different networks, and keep them in different places so one stolen bag does not take both. Save your bank's 24-hour international number somewhere reachable without the card and without the app, on paper or in your phone's notes. Keep a modest amount of emergency cash separate from your wallet. Before you go, check you can still receive your bank's verification codes abroad, and that someone at home could help if you lost the phone too.
6

Assuming your destination works the way home does

The card-versus-cash question no longer has one answer and the mistake now runs in both directions. Turn up in much of Central Asia, the Balkans, rural Greece or large parts of Southeast Asia with only a card and you will struggle for taxis, markets and small guesthouses. Turn up in parts of Scandinavia with a pocket of cash and you will find businesses that simply will not take it.

American Express acceptance is patchier than Visa or Mastercard almost everywhere, which matters if it is your only fee-free card.

What to do: spend five minutes finding out whether your destination is card-first or cash-first before you go, and carry a small float of local currency either way for taxis, tips and the places that do not take plastic. In a cash economy, plan where you will withdraw rather than relying on finding a machine.
The one habit that covers most of this. Before you hand over a card or press confirm, ask two questions: am I being charged in the local currency, and do I know what this is costing me in pounds? Those two cover points one, two and four between them, which is where most of the money goes. The rest is preparation you do once, at home, before you fly. See also the six mistakes people make buying travel insurance.

Sources

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