With travel restrictions easing worldwide, many of us getting ready to hit the road again. This means people will be monitoring currency exchange rates to ensure they get the most out of their travel budgets.
One hack that you may want to consider: a multi currency app.
READ MORE: Here is our list of best apps to plan your trip as we open up travel
What is a multi currency app?
A multi currency app allows you to receive, pay, exchange and hold multiple currencies. With an account, you can hold different currencies, each in its own e-wallet. When you’re overseas, you then have the option of either withdrawing cash or making a payment in a specific currency with a debit card.
“I struggled to wrap my head around the concept of a multi currency account,” admitted Stella Goh, a 34-year-old speech and drama teacher. “How do I get the cash out if my foreign currency was in an app?”
Stella felt that nothing could replace the versatility of cash when one is travelling. “You don’t know if a shop accepts credit cards but you know it will definitely take cash,” she added.
So, what got Stella to finally give a multi currency app a go?
“It was more an education and less a revelation,” she laughed. “I saw my sister-in-law withdraw money at a 7-Eleven in Niseko (in Hokkaido, Japan) and asked what was using. Of course, she took the chance to show off and said she’s using Revolut and then explained how the app and the card work, and how with ATM withdrawals, I could actually still get hold of cash if I needed to!”
Never miss out on a good exchange rate
Any seasoned traveller will tell you that the worst place to exchange money in the airport. The arrival hall is often your last chance to get hold of any local currency to catch a taxi or a train to your hotel, so the money changers there know they can get away with offering you the worst rates.
A multi currency app lets you keep abreast of currency exchange rates minus the legwork it used to require.
For instance, if you are planning a trip to Europe in December, you don’t have to stalk money changers to catch the best exchange rate. Simply set the app to automatically buy a currency when it hits a certain rate (e.g, USD1 = €0.85) and hold it in your app until you are ready to spend it.
Get cash in hand with the app’s debit card
A multi currency app often provides its customers with a debit card at no extra charge. Besides letting you make online and contactless payments, the card doubles up as an overseas ATM card.
Remember to switch your app’s e-wallet to the correct currency (e.g, USD) before you depart or on arrival. This way, whether you’re paying by card or making an ATM withdrawal, you are using the USD you’ve bought earlier with your own currency using your multi currency app.
Read more: Revolut’s James Sheehan discusses travel in the ‘new normal’
Revolut lets its customers withdraw and spend in over 150 currencies. Say you’re in Vietnam and you have a considerable amount of USD in your app. What you can do is switch to your USD e-wallet and make an ATM withdrawal in Vietnamese Dong. Your app will perform the exchange, and deduct the amount accordingly from your multi currency account.
Multi currency apps are not just for travelling
What if countries decide to clamp down on travel yet again? Does it mean you’ll have no use for your multi currency app?
You can still use the debit card to pay for local transactions like groceries, F&B, and public transport. Your multi currency app might even save you a pretty penny when you shop on overseas online stores such as ASOS or TaoBao.
If your multi currency app of choice utilises the interbank rate for foreign exchange, you might want to pay for your online buys in the site’s home currency (e.g, GBP on ASOS) as this could beat the exchange rate provided by the site or your bank’s credit card.
Here are a list of multi currency apps:
A number of multi-currency apps have shopping and cashback benefits attached to them too.
- Instarem’s Amaze card gives 1% cashback on top of any points or cashback your linked credit cards would earn
- YouTrip has YouTrip Perks like up to 7% cashback on Sephora purchases
- Revolut has a Chrome extension called Revolut Shopper that automatically applies cashback to your purchases at sites like Lazada, iHerb, and Decathlon.
- Wise multi currency account allows you hold up to 154 currencies in the app
Should you use a multi currency app?
It really depends on what you’re looking for in a multi currency app. You need to consider how many currencies you need to store at one time, whether or not you are exchanging it back to your local currency.
Deciding on the multi currency account or app also depends on what you are looking to do and your spending habits. It is best to consider all the options before making a specific choice.
This article was submitted by Danielle Wong on behalf of Revolut
