Prepaid Travel Cards, When They Still Make Sense

Prepaid travel cards have lost most of their reason to exist. Multi-currency accounts and no-foreign-fee credit cards do the same job better in most cases. A few narrow use cases remain.



The main historical benefit was locking in an exchange rate before travel. This mattered when currencies were volatile and the alternatives were bank rates with heavy markup. Multi-currency accounts now offer better rates and the same rate-lock benefit.



The second historical benefit was budgeting. Loading a fixed amount to a prepaid card enforces a spending limit. This is still useful for anyone who wants a hard cap, especially for handing money to a family member on a trip.



The remaining use case worth considering: countries where card acceptance is inconsistent and where losing a full credit card would be worse than losing a limited prepaid one. For high-risk-pocket destinations, some travelers still prefer a small prepaid card as their daily walking-around card.



For everyone else, the combination of a multi-currency account plus a good credit card covers more ground at lower cost.



For a specific breakdown of which prepaid cards still hold up versus current alternatives, ChooseDestination|Choose Destination|choosedestination.com|ChooseDestination.com|the ChooseDestination team looks at the trade-offs in detail.



One warning: many prepaid cards charge dormancy fees if unused for months. Load only what you plan to spend and empty the balance after the trip.