{"id":425794,"date":"2026-04-30T20:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T20:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/425794\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T20:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T20:44:09","slug":"tourists-warned-over-choice-between-foreign-or-your-own-currency-when-using-atm-abroad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/425794\/","title":{"rendered":"Tourists warned over choice between foreign or your own currency when using ATM abroad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite Googling it 100 times, there’s always that moment of panic when you forget what currency to pay in when you’re on holiday.<\/p>\n

Particularly in Europe, you always end up visiting that place which only accepts cash, forcing you to head to the ATM machine.<\/p>\n

Obviously you leave the missus at the dinner table so it doesn’t look like you’re doing a runner from the restaurant.<\/p>\n

Now, many cash machines will ask whether you want to be charged in your home currency<\/a> or their local one.<\/p>\n

While choosing your own currency might seem like the logical choice, it can actually make the withdrawal more expensive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is due to something called Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC), which allows the provider to convert the money<\/a> into your home currency using their own exchange rate.<\/p>\n

\"CashCash machines abroad will give you the option of choosing in the home or local currency (Getty Stock Images)<\/p>\n

Issue is, that rate is usually worse than the one your bank would use, meaning you end up pay extra without always realising.<\/p>\n

For example, if you’re from the UK<\/a> and spend \u20ac20 at a Spanish ATM, the machine will offer to convert the amount into pounds.<\/p>\n

If you had accepted the conversion, the ATM would have charged \u00a316.75.<\/p>\n

Instead, by choosing to be charged in Euros and letting their bank handle the conversion, the final cost was \u00a316.44, as reported by Wise<\/a> (figures accurate as of last year).<\/p>\n

Although the difference on a small withdrawal might not seem huge, these extra charges can quickly add up during a trip.<\/p>\n

\"MartinMartin Lewis’ advice is to take cash with you on holiday (Getty Stock Images)<\/p>\n

Martin Lewis explained on MoneySavingExpert.com<\/a> that it’s better to get cash before you head off.<\/p>\n

“While personally if I need cash, I use my specialist card and tend to withdraw it from an ATM at the airport as soon as I arrive. Yet if we focus only on bureaux de change,” he said.<\/p>\n

“In general it’s a better bet to get cash before you go, as you can research the cheapest rates (use TravelMoneyMax<\/a>).<\/p>\n

“Otherwise travel abroad and you’re blind to what’s out there and especially in tourist resorts you can find poor rates and limited competition.<\/p>\n

“I’m not saying overseas bureaux can’t undercut UK ones, it’s just they have to be very cheap to beat the UK’s cheapest, and it’s unlikely you’ll stumble on that randomly.<\/p>\n

“The exception is if you know of a specific bureau that may give very good rates, for example, you go to the same place every year. Then absolutely if you know what you’re doing, wait.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite Googling it 100 times, there’s always that moment of panic when you forget what currency to pay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,176,61,60,166,1087,174,175,2521],"class_list":["post-425794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-lifestyle","tag-money","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}