Italy Travel Tip: The Best ATM Cards for Your Trip · Sep 11, 03:31 PM by James Martin
Yes, this summer I bulked up on Debit cards from several accounts and set off to see how much we’d be bilked out of when requesting Euros from Italian Bancomats. This resulted in the article given the unwieldy title: ATM Cards and Foreign Transaction Fees – Four US ATM Cards Tested in Europe
The top card belonged to a bank I’m really getting to like. It’s an online bank called EverBank.
Sign up and you’ll get 6.01% APR on your checking account for three months. Then it drops to below 4%, but still, that’s not bad. They exchanged money fairly, charging only a 1% transaction fee.
But folks in the know, like the travelers at Slow Travel Talk are talking about Capital One’s High Yield Money Market, currently paying a 5% yield and you can get a debit card to withdraw from the account that currently carries no fees for for an ATM card withdrawal made in a foreign country.
Everbank also has a money market account that pays 6.01% initially and 5.01% APY after.
So these are my recommendations: get one or both of these accounts for your trip to Italy (or anywhere in Europe). And remember, things could change with the blink of an eye, charges can added at just about any time, after all, you can afford to be gouged, you’re going to Europe!
(Money in Europe must be very, very, sexy. My spell checker suggests Eros instead of Euros. I recommend that as well—unless you need to eat. Food I mean…)
Mario Batali Freed from the Junk Food Channel Italian Autostrada Map
