The best banks and cards for European travellers

Rules for inclusion:

I’ve focused on pan-european and multi-country offers (list is growing every year) with zero or very low conversion and/or withdrawal fees. There is a decent option for every EEA resident available here.

Credit cards are still mostly local only. They should at least offer 0 or very low conversion fees.

Eligibility usually concerns residence, not citizenship.

Recommendations:

Unless you see an offer on the list above that fits your needs even better, get Zen or My Travel Union. Both use card company rates and have low or no monthly fees.

If you travel only occasionally Monese is also a good option, the Classic tier can be up- and downgraded on a monthly basis. The basic tier is free.

If the included travel insurance justifies the price for you N26 You is great as well.

Credit cards: If there isn’t one listed for your country or you don’t qualify for one, don’t worry, you only truly need to use a credit card when renting a car or similar (depending on country), for most other purposes a debit or prepaid card is just fine.

Watch out: There are some banks that hide their currency conversion fee behind the fact that they use their own exchange rates instead of those from Visa or Mastercard. This way they can claim there are “zero” conversion fees, but then use exchange rates that are worse than the card companies’ and pocket the difference. The fine print should reveal this, but it’s a pain.

For some European countries not using the Euro there’s an additional wrinkle: There can be double conversions. You spend in say Indian Rupees, Mastercard converts to Euro and your bank then converts from € to your local currency with their own exchange rate. That’s how they can still have their cut. Seems to happen more with Mastercard than Visa. Here’s a good explainer how it works with Polish banks. Again, the fine print should reveal this.

Now, Revolut, Curve and Wise for example do not use Visa or Mastercard rates either, but at least they are transparent in that they use the mid-market rate. But still, with Revolut and Curve you’re up to 2% worse off on weekends, and with Wise in any case. 99% of the time you’re better off sticking to the card companies’ rates and you won’t have to compare rates and what not.

Inside the EEA the European Central Bank rates are the best, but few banks use them for card transactions.