Hi all,
I've just got back from a year in europe, where I used my Wizard Clear Advantage MasterCard for all my cash and purchases. I called them a few times before I went, and perfected a system for using the card to ensure you don't incur any fees/charges for ATM withdrawals and purchases:
1. Decide how much you want to take out in (local currency) cash, lets say €1,000.
2. Go to the xe website (they also have a handy iphone app). Find out what the equivalent is in AUD at the current exchange rate, ie €1,000=AUD$1,418.68.
3. Bpay this amount in australian dollars onto your wizard clear advantage account (plus say $5 or $10 in case the exchange rate changes in 1 day's time - so lets say AUD$1,425).
4. Check on the online service centre, to see when the money has appeared. You need to look at 'available credit', NOT "current balance". The current balance takes several days to update (as it needs to wait for the transactions to 'post', but the "available credit" is always correct for at that moment). E.g., if you're credit limit is $6000, you will know the money has turned up when the credit limit changes to $7,425.
5. Once the balance has appeared, go to the ATM and take out €1,000. Place it in your foreign bank account (this is what I did - I had a free bank account with ING in the Netherlands), or whatever you want to do with it.
6. Check on the online service centre, to make sure you haven't taken more than you transferred out (this is important - see below).
7. Now, you can start making purchases with your card. You can keep on making purchases with your card and will get up to the normal 55 days interest free, or whenever you to take more money out.
8. When you need to take more money out, follow steps 1-6 again. However, this time, you will need to add the AUD equivalent of what you want to withdraw PLUS whatever you have spent below your credit limit in AUD.
I.e. lets say your "credit limit" is $6,000 and your "available credit" is $5,100. Lets say you want to take out €100. On, xe €100 = AUD$141.87 (call it $145 for a bit of a buffer). We need to bpay $900 + $145 = $1045. And we need to wait until the 'available credit" changes to $6,145.
Make sense?
One more thing to be careful about: when you take out cash, you must make sure you don't take out more than you have b-paid on.
For example, lets say you transfer on only $140, and then take out €100 (which ends up getting charged as, say $142.34), your available credit will now be $5,998.
What happens now is that Wizard starts charging you cash advance rates (19.49%) from that day. AND if you make purchases, you will also pay 19.49% from the day you make that purchase as well. To avoid be charged the 10.49%, make sure when you withdraw money that you always stay "in the positive", ie it says your available credit is higher than your credit limit.
So, here's my question for you guys. The only annoying thing about this, is that as soon as you want to take more cash out, you need to bpay money for that cash-out, PLUS pay off any purchases you've made up to that date. Ideally, I'd love to have 2 wizard clear advantage mastercards: one to take cash out with (and I can just bpay money on, each time I want to take out more), and one to make purchases (and I just pay this off monthly, by my payment date).
So the question is: are there any other australian credit cards out there, that charge no fees (foreign currency + whatever else) for overseas purchases? That way I could have my ideal situation!
Hope this helps. If you have any questions, post them here, and I can reply to them.
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