My mother is going abroad again next month, and mentioned getting one if these, gotta say, I didn’t know they existed.
Any ideas of what’s good out there?
Anyone used one?

My advice would be to get a no international fee credit card.

There are a few options out there, like Halifax, but I’ve already got one of their balance transfer cards so that was ruled out. This meant I ended up with an Aqua card.

HORRIBLE interest rate, but just pay it off each time. Also stingy on the first credit limit it gives you, but fill it and pay it off and it quickly doubles and doubles. You can easily over pay it to begin with, or top up on their online banking if you’re going to be spending loads.

http://www.aquacard.co.uk/credit-cards/aqua-reward/

The whole point? No fees and uses very standard exchange rates. I’ve used it all over the world and it’s golden.

Just remember to pay in the local currency so you’re using your own exchange rate as some hotel/shop ones can be a little enthusiastic.

The ability to chip and pin a coffee on a airport transfer knowing it’s UK debit card style cost price is worth it alone!

We ended up getting one – through Tesco / Travelex – Nick, for a family trip we made over the summer, and for future use. I’m not sure how all the chahrges worked out vs. cash, or using a credit card, and I made a couple of mistakes in using it, but in general it worked very well and I was happy – exposure to it getting lost / stolen is only as much as you put on it, which can be done by direct transfer or online, selection of currencies, and easy to use.

Not a substitute for cash but saves carrying a wad of currency about.

We have a Halifax Card which is good for travelling. We also have a prepaid MasterCard which we use as a cash card. We load it up and then withdraw money at ATM’s where ever we happen to be. Ours is in Euro’s so you pay the conversion costs when you load it up, but withdrawals incur no charge. I understand that you can use it as a real ‘credit card’, upto the limit of what is left on the card, but we don’t use it like this.

Depends where she is going and what the card is.

I’ve had issues trying to use credit cards in Europe as they aren’t accepted in some shops/hotels but debit card was okay (although not always). I had this issue in a Hotel in France on Sunday, wouldn’t accept UK credit cards, we tried a few between us, but no issues with a UK debit card.

We have a Halifax Card which is good for travelling.

The Halifax is the ideal one to get if you can because it does free cash withdrawals as well as fee free spending. Shame I couldn’t get one.

The OP is talking about a prepaid cash passport. There are loads out there, most re branded from Mastercard with similar terms and rates. Some are now multi currency rather than single though you load each currency purse separately. I understand as far a pukka low/no fee credit cards go, Halifax or Post Office are the best choices.

We used a FairFX card in Spain, got a discount through Money Saving Expert and it was fine. Widely accepted and I think we got charged about 1.50 euro’s on cash withdrawals, everything else was just like paying with a debt card here. Nice and secure if you lose it. We got 2 cards just in case we lost one and so had cash until a replacement turned up.

It’s worth looking at We Swap for this sort of thing.

You load it up with Sterling, and they swap it to the currency you need (by using someone in the We Swap scheme abroad).

1% commission and great rates for the slowest transfer, and use it for credit-debit transactions or cash with no fees.

If you link with another user in the Euro zone (for example) you get zero commission.

Check out https://revolut.com/ – far slicker than We Swap.

Got a card to use in the summer, worked brilliantly. Fee free currency conversion within a phone app (at good rates too) and no fees for card spending or cash machine withdrawals for the first year. So easy to convert currency back and forth, much easier than trying to guess what you need in advance.

Only (slight) negative point is the card can take a week or two to arrive.

we use a virgin prepay card when we go to canada, load with gbp, spend in cad.
we got a better exchange rate using that than changing cash at the post office.
my wife and i have one each, and if away for a couple of weeks, we put some cash on before we go, then top up via internet banking while there if we need it.

It’s worth looking at We Swap for this sort of thing.

You load it up with Sterling, and they swap it to the currency you need (by using someone in the We Swap scheme abroad).

1% commission and great rates for the slowest transfer, and use it for credit-debit transactions or cash with no fees.

If you link with another user in the Euro zone (for example) you get zero commission.

Oh, I like the look of that. Will look into it as I hate the Post Office one I use.