Eleven years ago there were no 200 PHP transaction fees at the Philippine end of the transaction and you could withdraw 20,000 PHP in a single transaction on an international card, it was about seven or eight years ago that they started this carry on with the P200 fees and at the same time they reduced the withdrawal limit for international cards. Basically someone woke up to the opportunity. Can a foreigner get a PNB Global Filipino card while in the Phils? It's not easy to set up any PNB stuff in the UK in my experience.
Yes. I think that Thailand may have been the country that started the trend of charging foreigners for ATM withdrawals. And I remember being refused an "over the counter" cash withdrawal in the Philippines, because the bank had a letter from head office saying that foreigners now had to use the ATM, which pissed me off big time due to the daily limits. The young daughter of my xxx's sister had died, and I was trying to get cash together for the child size coffin, headstone, and other stuff. I try to forget those times.
Reminds me of the time I tried to use my NatWest debit card at an ATM at MetroBank - it wouldn't work, MB blamed NatWest and NatWest blamed MB. I don't know if its still the case but years ago, MB ATM's used only 6 digit pin numbers, so anyone using a UK card with 4 digits would be scuppered. Another time, I used my Nationwide Flexaccount debit card with no fees at all, and I could withdraw as little as 100Php. Those days are long gone. These days I use the Halifax Clarity Mastercard, but have yet to use it in the Philippines.
"we" have a UK Lloyds bank joint current a/c. i pay ££ in this end--she draws 10,000 pp a time over there. the charges are about £6.
I have a Lloyds account, but have not used the card at a foreign ATM for years, think it is one of the "bad ones" to use abroad.
Yes, especially once the cut on the FX, minimum charges, and foreign ATM withdrawal charge are taken into account. I used to have it worked out in spreadsheets, maybe I will revisit that later.
The charges for using a Lloyds card abroad are summarised on Lloyds website For an ATM withdrawal in the Philippines, assuming an exchange rate of 70 PHP per GBP. PHP=Philippine Peso, GBP=British Pound. The exchange rates used by Lloyds are determined by the payment scheme provider, Mastercard or Visa. There will be a small charge there as well, I suspect less than 0.5%.
Yes oss. It's no problem. Just pop into any PNB branch for documents to submit. All done and dusted in a single visit
in all the transactions over the last 2 years---there has never been that 200pp ATM charge--even though she uses different machines / locations. maybe its because the a/c has a monthly fee of £9.95 ?
I believe that the 200 PHP charge detail may be displayed on the ATM machine / payment slip, and will not be itemised on your Lloyds account statement. The charge to your account will be 10,200 peso rather than the 10,000 paid out by the ATM. Or is there some other explanation? I try to avoid using anything other than my Citicard in Citibank ATM's, or cash in money changers these days when travelling, Caxton FX is my rarely used backup.
Yes the fee is only itemised at the ATM, for 10,000 peso it would cost 10200 and be a single transaction at the prevailing exchange rate, I used LLoyds and after about 2007 I was always charged so I quit using my card.
I've noticed recently that the P200 charge on foreign issued cards is still being displayed but the last 3 times I used my Visa Caxton card over the past couple of weeks there hasn't been any such deduction made. That was at 3 different ATM's Hmmm interesting. They're no longer issuing Visa cards but are switching to Mastercard. It's a single multi-currency card now rather than having a different card for each currency.
Caxton FX Mastercard does not allow PHP as a "load" currency. Worth bearing in mind that the Caxton FX exchange rate takes a "cut" on the exchange rate used for conversions. Doing quick online comparisons for EUR and USD, it appears to be about 2.5%, possibly slightly higher, think it used to be about 2.75%. As I see it, you should load the card with GBP, the only reason for loading multiple currencies is if you want to speculate and lock into a decent exchange rate, example, 18 months ago USD was about 1.70 to the GBP, now it is about 1.43. When you make a purchase, the card balance in the purchase currency (eg EUR) is used first, if there is not enough then the load currency balance (eg GBP) will be used, then other currency balances will be used, and these will be converted to the purchase currency. Hence there is a danger that double conversions could be involved, GBP to EUR for the load, then EUR back to GBP, or EUR to USD for the spend, hence you would lose over 5%.
Yes I know that PHP is not a load currency. It never has been. I've held a Caxton card for many years. For me it's been a very convenient and useful tool on many occasions and I hope it will continue. Anyway, the major topic of my post was that the P200 'local charge' on foreign issued cards hasn't been made recently when I used my Caxton visa card. I wonder if that's been the general case with other cards