Traveling abroad can be an exciting and rewarding experience, but it can also be expensive. One of the factors that can quickly add up while on holiday is withdrawing cash from an ATM. While many people now use a travel card while overseas, the use of cash is still very much a thing in many countries.
Aussies have recently been informed of the most expensive countries to withdraw cash from by Wise, an online money transfer company.
According to Wise, Argentina tops the list with a whopping 16.04 per cent fee. To put this in perspective, if an Aussie was to withdraw $50 per day for seven days while on holiday in Argentina, totalling $350, they’d pay the equivalent of $56.14 in fees.
São Tomé and Príncipe, an island nation in Central Africa, has the second highest withdrawal fee for Aussies at 9.98 per cent, followed by Iceland in third spot at 8.88 per cent and Lebanon in fourth place at 4.67 per cent.
In addition to the foreign withdrawal fee, some countries also have currency conversion fees. This means that Australians will have to pay an additional fee when they convert their Australian dollars into the local currency of the country they are visiting. This fee can also be quite high, depending on the country and the exchange rate.
In some cases, the fees imposed on Australians when withdrawing money abroad can be so high that it makes it more economical to withdraw the money at home before travelling.
According to Nilan Peiris, the Chief Product Officer at Wise, while people often focus on discovering the best card to use when budgeting for a holiday, they do not usually consider the additional cost associated with it.
“It is vital that banks prioritize customers when it comes to hidden fees, as this has a significant effect on people’s buying power both domestically and internationally,” he said.
