Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
3
Banking Overseas
Your trip will go a lot smoother if you budget and organize your money before you leave. That starts
with the right bank account. You'll be accessing your money multiple times a week from locations
around the world, so it's important to have a good bank that is easy to work with and has few fees.
In the previous chapter, we discussed how you can save for your trip and lower your day-to-day living
expenses. Now I'm here to tell you in a few easy steps how to make those hard-earned dollars stretch even
further so you can have some extra money on the road. The biggest mistake most travelers make is that they
don't make their money
work for them
while they are away.
Setting Up a Checking Account
The first thing you want to do is set up a checking account at a major, global bank. While we may hate the
major banks for their involvement in the economic crisis and the subsequent bailouts they got, unfortunately
smaller banks don't always have the leverage to get better currency exchange rates or keep operations and
ATMs around the world. Most of the world's major banks have partnership agreements where they waive
their out-of-network ATM service charge.
Below is a list of the banks linked through the Global ATM alliance, the principal international banking
network. All the major banks listed here have agreements with one another wherein if you belong to one bank,
you can use the ATMs of all the other banks without being charged a fee:
ABSA
(South Africa): absa.co.za/Absacoza
Bank of America
(United States): bankofamerica.com
Barclays
(England, Wales, Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, and certain countries in Africa):
barclays.co.uk
BNP Paribas
(France, Ukraine): bnpparibas.com/en/home
China Construction Bank
(China): ccb.com/en/home/index.html
Deutsche Bank
(Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal, and Italy): db.com/us
Santander Serfin
(Mexico): santander.com.mx/Nueva Version/index.html
Scotiabank
(Canada, Caribbean, Peru, Chile, and Mexico): scotiabank.com
