Cash or Card? Countries where you still need cash.

[Mattg]

I was recently in Ecuador and many shops etc. only accepted cash. The good news though is that they use USD as their official currency and everything was very affordable, so getting cash wasn't a big problem.

I was also in Argentina recently. Many businesses do accept credit cards, but offer discounts in the order of 10-15% if you pay in cash. You can also save quite a lot of money by bringing USD with you and changing them to Argentinian pesos on the street. The exchange rate you get is around 15% better than the official exchange rate. So by changing cash on the street and paying cash, you're effectively saving up to 30%.

 

[There'sOnlyOneJimmy]

I’d be interested to know if UniCaja Bianco ATMs want to charge a fee for your ING card?

I did the test.
I used the ING card at a UniCaja ATM. The ATM didn’t charge a fee, ING charged $5 and then rebated it (I jumped the hoops last month), and the transaction converted within 0.3% of XE rate.
Test successful…

 

[SYD]

I did the test.
I used the ING card at a UniCaja ATM. The ATM didn’t charge a fee, ING charged $5 and then rebated it (I jumped the hoops last month), and the transaction converted within 0.3% of XE rate.
Test successful…

Excellent. Many thanks for the feedback!