Nationwide

For some years now I’ve been harping on about how great Nationwide are as the only UK bank with a debit card you can use abroad for no fees. Likewise, their credit card is one of only three (along with Abbey National and the Post Office) with the same no-fee deal. I even changed my regular current account to them to take advantage of these.

But – you guessed it – no more. From 6 May for its credit card, and 1 June on the debit card, you’ll pay an added 0.84% on spending outside Europe, jumping to 1% in July. Their wording is that they themselves are not adding a fee. They’re simply no longer going to “absorb” the fees that Visa charge to the bank. It’s still – I believe – less than virtually every other bank’s existing charges.

I got the first warning of this from the excellent Money Saving Expert site, though full details can be found (if you dig…) here at Nationwide.

So, without doing a huge amount of research it seems that changing the credit card could be worthwhile but that the debit card (for ATM withdrawals) is still a better deal than any other.