Best card/cash abroad

[Brains]

Don't think that this is quite accurate. Though not a 'bank' any savings deposited monies held by them are lodged in a bank and hence covered by the FCA Deposit protection of £85k.
Monies used in the 'current' account ( the front facing account) are 'safeguarded' by way of being held in a bank account collectively. If the company is 'honest' ( yes the big question!) then all money they have of customers current accounts will reside in that safeguarded account which in the case of insolvency can only be depleted by the administrator for their costs before the customers take precedence over any other creditors. Hence a worst case scenario is that you'll get a very large percentage if not all of your current account funds.....

For our part we use Barclays to hold our funds and supply a credit card ( which is rarely used and mainly for hire cars etc) as well as an emergency debit card. It is only normally used to load £ onto our Starling card which has both £ and Euro accounts. We use this for large purchases and for loading our Revolute cards which seldom hold more than a day or twos funds and are what we use for most purchases and always on line. The philosophy is that the Barclays (except in emergencies) is never exposed to cloning / copying etc etc especially as it is via PIN pad while on line and normally never used elsewhere. The Starling is good for ATM cash withdrawals and big bills like apartment rentals etc as can pay direct to euro accounts etc etc and has no credit facility. So max exposure is what is on the card. The Revolute, is most exposed but has no overdraft facility and so is in real terms expendable if scammed in anyway as it usually only has a couple of hundred euros on at most..... it all seems to work so far!

Belt, Braces and Bootstrap solution!

(We broadly do something similar, except we don't have the Revolut card)

 

[Rob Turner]

We use Revolut.
Good for FX transfers too.

 

[Cobnarowl]

Look at "Currensea"

 

[starquake]

We use Revolut.
Good for FX transfers too.

Agree on this, but it isn't belt and braces.

Example in Florida this May brother in law used Revolut instead of Monzo -> (Sister in law had Monzo!)
At at least 5 resturaurants during the trip it was not accepted and the Monzo card had to be substituted.

I have no idea if it was an issue "that" week or anywhere, but it's why we carry multiple cards with good Fraud protection -> and Revolut didn't handle the cloning situation we encountered as well as Monzo during trip (Americans tend to split bills at the table when 2 familys dine together so 2 transactions, and usually a higher % of tip!). One resturant cloned (both) our cards during the trip, Chris (brother) had issues getting it dealt with in Florida, Monzo had a new card number available contactless to me instantly.

Just our opinion, but agree with others points about monies not being as protected as they should be compared to a firm holding a banking license, and given Starling, Chase, Monzo exist, why use the only one of the big 4 commonly used 0 fee options now ( I count these with Halifax's Clarity card as a good alternative too as being a major player) without one? There have been several cases of SIPP providers going bust where similar reliance on the protected bank account status of (ultimately) a Ltd provider going bust where the monies of the account holders have been "taken" by the administatration fees which in case of Revolut going bust would undoubtably go into hundreds of millions. (https://www.investorschronicle.co.u.../11/07/what-to-do-when-your-broker-goes-bust/) -> look what happened with Beaufort originally (a multiple hundred million SIPP provider going out of business). Working in the financial services industry myself, I wouldn't bank and rely on nominee accounts protecting you one bit in reality given the many examples of that failing in other industrys such as investments in SIPPs relying on the same legislation having fees taken during the administration process. I will personally only use Revolut from the moment they have a banking license due to this (and yes, I will then open an account as it's useful at that point for the being able to hedge rates ahead of a trip unlike the Monzo, Starling, Chase options.).