Best card to use overseas?

[Mogg]

Whats the best card to take overseas with you? I will be in SE Asia ( mostly Thailand and Vietnam). I am looking to avoid foreign exchanges fees and such.

[Mitsu3000gt]

Is this card similar to the Capital One Aspire or am I missing something? Looks to be a flat 2% without limits:

https://creditcardgenius.ca/cards/mb...ite-mastercard

Annual fee is cheap too.

I have the CO but I am trying to help a colleague find the best CC.

[sabad66]

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Whats the best card to take overseas with you? I will be in SE Asia ( mostly Thailand and Vietnam). I am looking to avoid foreign exchanges fees and such.

Hometrust and Rogers MC are the best for forex based on my research.

Hometrust would be no forex fee (2.5% savings) and 1% cashback, with no yearly fee.

Rogers has the forex fee, but 4% cashback (so net 1.5% cashback). But does have a yearly fee of $39. YF is waived if you are a Rogers/Fido/Chattr customer tho. Also the cashback has some limitations... can be redeemed any time against rogers bill or blue jays tickets, or once per year as straight cash back on your statement.

Both are good but really the deciding factor would be if the YF is worth the extra 0.5% you get. If you're a rogers/fido customer i think Rogers is the better choice.

[tha_bandit]

Fido MC is also another choice, same as Rogers, no annual fee

[Mitsu3000gt]

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Hometrust and Rogers MC are the best for forex based on my research.

Hometrust would be no forex fee (2.5% savings) and 1% cashback, with no yearly fee.

Rogers has the forex fee, but 4% cashback (so net 1.5% cashback). But does have a yearly fee of $39. YF is waived if you are a Rogers/Fido/Chattr customer tho. Also the cashback has some limitations... can be redeemed any time against rogers bill or blue jays tickets, or once per year as straight cash back on your statement.

Both are good but really the deciding factor would be if the YF is worth the extra 0.5% you get. If you're a rogers/fido customer i think Rogers is the better choice.

Yes the drawback with the Fido MC is that it's a pain to get the cash back if you don't want it to go towards your phone bills. Also, people's foreign purchases are usually nowhere near the rest of their domestic purchases (i.e. when they aren't traveling), so I think it's better to just go with the Home Trust unless you have unusual circumstances and enormous foreign spending.

[tha_bandit]

Thanks for the additional info, I signed up for FidoMC for the bonus, will prob also get the home trust VISA

[Mogg]

Thanks for the info guys! I have applied for the Home trust card.

[taemo]

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Thanks for the info guys! I have applied for the Home trust card.

got my Home Trust card few weeks ago, couple of things that I found out
1. there's an inactivity fee
2. you can't change the PIN, has to be what they sent you
3. doesn't support tap-and-pay

[D'z Nutz]

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got my Home Trust card few weeks ago, couple of things that I found out
1. there's an inactivity fee
2. you can't change the PIN, has to be what they sent you
3. doesn't support tap-and-pay

What are the details of the inactivity fee? That could be annoying cause sometimes i went months without using my Amazon VISA since I just used it for traveling and Amazon. The PIN thing would be annoying too.

I was browsing RFD yesterday and noticed a new no-Forex fee card popped up, but I'm hesitant to jump on it right now cause I've never heard of them.
https://brimfinancial.com/

[mzdspd]

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Whats the best card to take overseas with you? I will be in SE Asia ( mostly Thailand and Vietnam). I am looking to avoid foreign exchanges fees and such.

You may avoid the foreign transaction fees but be prepared to be paying 5-6$ for withdrawal for cash from any atm in Thailand or Vietnam. Most places only accept cash.

We would just take around 300$ CAD out from ATM at a time and just carry around what we need for the day.

[jwslam]

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What are the details of the inactivity fee? That could be annoying cause sometimes i went months without using my Amazon VISA since I just used it for traveling and Amazon. The PIN thing would be annoying too.

The RFD thread on the topic says it's 360 days inactive will charge you $10 or balance, whichever is greater.

[jwslam]

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I was browsing RFD yesterday and noticed a new no-Forex fee card popped up, but I'm hesitant to jump on it right now cause I've never heard of them.
https://brimfinancial.com/

Looks good for the Amazon Buyer in me...

Brim will be offering earn multipliers at participating merchants. Currently, Brim offers 2x the points on all purchases at Amazon.ca, Amazon Video, Netflix, and Spotify. Double the points on purchases at these merchants are limited to your first $10,000 in annual spend and will return to your base earn thereafter.

edit: and now I just submitted an application. Got a referral code if anyone is willing to use it LOL

[Mitsu3000gt]

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got my Home Trust card few weeks ago, couple of things that I found out
1. there's an inactivity fee
2. you can't change the PIN, has to be what they sent you
3. doesn't support tap-and-pay

It definitely doesn't seem to be quite as good as the Amazon card. I don't have mine yet either - it's taking them forever to send it to me. For foreign spending though none of that should be an issue.

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What are the details of the inactivity fee? That could be annoying cause sometimes i went months without using my Amazon VISA since I just used it for traveling and Amazon. The PIN thing would be annoying too.

I was browsing RFD yesterday and noticed a new no-Forex fee card popped up, but I'm hesitant to jump on it right now cause I've never heard of them.
https://brimfinancial.com/

Brim's chart is confusing. They say their rewards are uncapped and unlimited, and right above that if you hover over the question mark in the comparison chart, they have a low limit/cap of $25K/yr before your rewards cut in half which makes it a deal breaker for domestic/local use.

Their cheapest no-fee card could work though for travel only, but you don't get any travel benefits with it - not even rental car insurance or lost baggage insurance.

[taemo]

Yeah 360 days when they charge you the inactive fee, not too bad unlike the previous BMO MC that I had that it was a couple of months.

They might release an option later on that will allow us to change the PIN.

I'll be using this mostly for travel and online/ebay purchases so I should be in the clear.

[D'z Nutz]

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The RFD thread on the topic says it's 360 days inactive will charge you $10 or balance, whichever is greater.

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Yeah 360 days when they charge you the inactive fee, not too bad unlike the previous BMO MC that I had that it was a couple of months.

Oh that's not bad. For some reason I was expecting 30 days of inactivity, which would have been annoying haha

[Crazyjoker77]

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got my Home Trust card few weeks ago, couple of things that I found out
1. there's an inactivity fee
2. you can't change the PIN, has to be what they sent you
3. doesn't support tap-and-pay

How did you find out about the inactivity fee? I read through the cardholder agreement posted online http://www.hometrust.ca/documents/VISA%20Agreement.pdf and I don't see any provision for that in there.

The card is getting slammed pretty hard on another forum I'm on but haven't heard anything about the inactivity fee at all. Mostly just people bitching about 2 hour hold times to find out its 8 weeks for the applications to be looked at and not being able to get very high limits for those that actually have gotten one...

[jwslam]

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How did you find out about the inactivity fee? I read through the cardholder agreement posted online http://www.hometrust.ca/documents/VISA%20Agreement.pdf and I don't see any provision for that in there.

Account Maintenance Fee: for an inactive Credit Card Account with a credit balance that has not changed for 360consecutive days, a fee of the lesser of $10.00 or the full credit balance will be charged on that date

http://www.hometrust.ca/documents/vi...ith_no_Fee.pdf

[taemo]

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How did you find out about the inactivity fee? I read through the cardholder agreement posted online http://www.hometrust.ca/documents/VISA%20Agreement.pdf and I don't see any provision for that in there.

The card is getting slammed pretty hard on another forum I'm on but haven't heard anything about the inactivity fee at all. Mostly just people bitching about 2 hour hold times to find out its 8 weeks for the applications to be looked at and not being able to get very high limits for those that actually have gotten one...

it was on one of the document with general information of the credit card when you receive it including interest rate, billing cycle, etc.
inactivity fee is the first thing I check on a new credit card as I got charged once for 10$ and never again lol.

now I'm 2nd questioning whether it was 30 days or 360 days. next time a beyonder receives their card, can they please post the info?
(i threw away mine)

[Mitsu3000gt]

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it was on one of the document with general information of the credit card when you receive it including interest rate, billing cycle, etc.
inactivity fee is the first thing I check on a new credit card as I got charged once for 10$ and never again lol.

now I'm 2nd questioning whether it was 30 days or 360 days. next time a beyonder receives their card, can they please post the info?
(i threw away mine)

If you hit "apply now" on the Preferred Visa it says it's 360 days. Probably won't affect too many people - if you travel or use foreign currency less than once per year, you probably don't care too much about 2.5% FX fees anyway unless it's a huge trip or expenditure.

Hopefully in a year or so Amazon gets another partner and we can all switch back

[jltabot]

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got my Home Trust card few weeks ago, couple of things that I found out
1. there's an inactivity fee
2. you can't change the PIN, has to be what they sent you
3. doesn't support tap-and-pay

How long ago did you apply? I applied in early January before the RFD hype/freak out about the chase card being discontinued. The best update I got was an email about a month ago saying they're backlogged in applications and they'll get to me shortly...