Tech Travel Tips for Canadians: Currency Exchange

Currency Exchange
Another big thing when travelling is exchanging your money for the local currency. You can just use your bank or credit card while travelling (if supported in the country you’re travelling to) but expect to get dinged with service fees and high exchange rates. Taking cash out of an ATM while abroad also usually costs a lot more since you’re paying your local bank fees for the conversion plus likely multiple service fees for using the ATM unless you have a special type of bank account.

A service I discovered a few years ago that has been a game changer is Wise – it’s like a virtual currency exchange. You load up your account with funds in a number of ways (e-transfer, direct debit, credit card) in your local currency and then you can transfer to virtual accounts in a different currency. Normally you’d need to have an account in that currency with your bank but Wise lets you create a multitude of different accounts in different currencies and you can easily move your money between them with much more reasonable exchange rates than what your bank would give you.

Here’s a scenario I’ve used to save money with Wise: I send $100Cdn to my Wise account via direct debit. I now have $100 in my Canadian account. I’m going to the US so I transfer my $100 Cdn to my US account and now I have roughly $70US available to use.

Wise gives you a virtual credit card that is also a debit card that works with Apple Pay, Google, etc. and can also send you a physical card. The beauty of the physical card is that it will recognize which country you’re using the card in and automatically withdraw from the appropriate virtual account (you need to have this setup ahead of time). You won’t get hit with double exchange fees.

When I was in Budapest, they use a different currency than Euros, the Forint, so I had to constantly withdraw from an ATM using my bank card for the local currency. Unfortunately, I didn’t have Wise at the time which would have allowed me to move money from any of my currency accounts (Canadian, US, Euro, etc) into the Hungarian account and wouldn’t have to worry about extra fees.

As with the eSIMs, if you use my invite code, you’ll get a fee-free transfer (up to $800) when you sign up.

They have a handy currency converter page where you can track the exchange rates over time before your trip.