Even frequent travellers can be bamboozled by foreign exchange, especially when it comes to juggling buy & sell rates and commissions.
Fortunately it can be very simple and you can skip the queues, secure great exchange rates and not pay commission charges by ordering your travel money in advance online.
What’s more, depending on when and how you pay, your cash could be in your hands from a conveniently located outlet as early as the next business day.
This article is sponsored by Travelex.
Online travel money: what can you order?
Through Travelex’s online ordering service, you can pre-order a variety of currencies for collection at any Travelex store or post office outlet that you nominate across Australia.
Included on that list are major currencies like US dollars, Great British pounds and euros along with other prominent currencies like Canadian dollars, Japanese yen, Chinese yuan, New Zealand dollars, Singapore dollars, Malaysian ringgits, Thai baht and Hong Kong dollars.
On top of that, a number of harder-to-find currencies can too be ordered right from your desktop, smartphone or tablet. Among them: Swiss francs, Saudi riyals, Mexican pesos, Brazilian reals, South African rand, Chilean pesos and UAE dirhams.
Need Brunei dollars, Colombian pesos, Czech korunas, Danish kroner, Egyptian pounds, Fiji dollars, Indonesian rupiah, Philippine pesos, South Korean won, Vietnamese dong or one of 17 other currencies? You’re also covered.
Travelex online travel money: locking in your rate
Now that you’ve found your currency, securing a competitive exchange rate should be the next priority – and for jetsetters planning well in advance, the Travelex ‘Travel Rate Tracker’ lets you set a desired exchange rate and notifies you via email when that rate, or one better, becomes available for sale.
For instance, in the last month one Aussie dollar could buy as high 75.92 US cents via Travelex online or as few as 72.30 US cents, depending on the date of purchase.
When converting A$5,000 into USD, that represents an extra US$181 in your pocket when buying at the higher rate – or US$181 less at the lower rate – so aim high, use the Travel Rate Tracker and place your order when the exchange rate is most in your favour.
If you find a great rate and don’t want to keep cash lying about, consider also a Travelex Cash Passport: a pre-paid card as opposed to cold hard cash.
A handy way to lock-in exchange rates on your money when they’re balanced in your favour, research by Travelex also reveals that 32% of Australians now reach for a travel money card when making payments abroad.
Travelex online travel money: speeding up delivery
For last-minute trips common with business travellers, using a credit or debit card to fund your foreign currency purchase before 3pm means your cash can be waiting at a Travelex airport outlet the very next business day.
A 0.89% fee applies to all card payments and these may be treated as a cash advance by your bank – incurring additional cash advance fees and interest charges – so consider using a Visa or MasterCard debit card, rather than a credit card, for the fastest turnaround with minimal fees.
Plan further in advance and you can avoid fees altogether when paying with BPAY, giving you a lead time of three business days when ordering on weekends or before 2:30pm on weekdays, or four business days when placing an order after 2:30pm.
Travelex travel money: collecting your cash at your convenience
In addition to Travelex outlets in airports, shopping centres and the like, foreign cash can also now be collected from post offices across the country: making for over 2,800 locations where your money can be waiting for you.
Whether that’s somewhere close to your workplace as you duck out for lunch, from your local shopping centre or post office which you’d be going past anyway or even at the airport before you board your flight, we’ll let you decide.
You don’t even need to search for a particular outlet – just plonk in your suburb or postcode during the ordering process and the Travelex site highlights all of the pick-up locations you can choose from.
Then it’s as easy as nominating a collection day, printing your order confirmation and presenting your passport, drivers licence or other form of ID to get your online travel money straight into your wallet.
This article is sponsored by Travelex.
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