Tesco have just launched the ingenious Tesco Travel Money Card which is designed to help British holidaymakers budget their finances abroad. The Tesco Travel Money Card is essentially a pre-pay Chip and PIN cash MasterCard which you ‘top up’ with foreign currency before you travel.

Currently only available in US Dollar and Euro formats, the card is not linked to your bank account in any way, and so it comes with an added level of security – if the card is stolen or lost, then there is no chance of becoming a victim of fraud.

Whilst there is no monthly or annual fee for using the Travel Money Card, and no commission on handling fee to top up the card with cash – which can be done by debit or credit card, on the phone or online – there are limits of how much you can upload at any one time, and fees for ATM withdrawals.

There is a nominal fee of $4 or €3 (dependant on where you travel, obviously) and the minimum amount of cash you can load on to the card at any one time is either $150 or €100. The maximum amount you can load on each day is set at $4,500 and €3,000 respectively, which is the same as the total amount you can have on the card at any one time.

Seeing as we’re not halfway through the holiday season, Tesco could have picked a better time to release this, maybe a couple of months ago, before the Euro rates went up. Still, the Tesco Travel Money Card is a great idea, as it helps you easily budget what you are spending, and as you get a free second card, which can be activated if the first card is lost or stolen, your money is safer than if you take it around in your wallet. Of course, if your second card is in your wallet then, that’s not much good…

This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 11:28 am and is filed under Budgeting, Travel Insurance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.