American Express announced with no notice that Serve & Bluebird cards would no longer be able to be used for ATM withdrawals internationally, I can only assume that there was regulatory/legal pressure to do so as leaving some of your cardholders stranded overseas when you’ve given them no warning isn’t a great way to build goodwill. I thought I’d look at some of the best options for withdrawing cash overseas from an ATM, since apparently some people were using these cards for that purpose even though they charged a $2.50 fee.
Contents
List Of Options
Schwab Bank High Yield Investor Checking Account
This account has the following features:
- No monthly fees
- No international or domestic ATM fees
- No foreign transaction fees
- 0.06% APY
- Card runs on the Visa network
This looks perfect and there is also a $100 bonus attached to this account! There is a downside though, a hard pull is done on your Equifax credit report when you open this card.
Betterment Checking Account
This account has the following features:
- No monthly fees
- No international or domestic ATM fees
- No foreign transaction fees (Visa fees gets reimbursed by Betterment)
- Card runs on Visa network
- Accompanying high-yield savings account
- No hard pull to open
- Our original post here
Aspiration Summit
This account has the following features:
- No monthly fees
- No ATM fees (ATMs with NYSE logo will have no fees and all other fees will be refunded at end of billing cycle)
- Foreign transaction fee of up to 1.1%
- 0.25% APY if your balance is below $2,500 or 1% APY if it’s above $2,500
Fidelity Visa Gold Check Card
This account has the following features:
- No monthly fees
- All ATM fees are refunded to your cash management account
- Foreign transaction fee of
1%0% - Card runs on the Visa network
- Can be used on any ATM that has the following logos: Visa®, Plus®, or Star®
- 0.07% APY
Bank of America Global ATM Alliance
Bank of America is part of something known as the Global ATM Alliance, basically the idea is that if you use a card from Bank of America to withdraw money from any of the other financial institutions in the alliance you won’t be charged a fee. This sounds great right? Wrong. They still charge you a 3% foreign transaction fee, so if you’re withdrawing any decent amount of money this will likely be much higher than the typical ATM fee.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully I’m missing an account that has no ATM or foreign transaction fees (FTF) and doesn’t require a hard pull (let me know in the comments if something should be added). If not it’ll really depend on your own circumstances if the hard pull is worth it to avoid 1% in FTF’s or not.
[Read:Â Low Fee & No Fee ATMs]
