Credit card comparison

June. 18,2023

How do you get money on your world trip?

At some point during your world travel planning, you have certainly already asked yourself how you will get your money during your world trip.

"When we always travelled back then, we always got everything in cash at the bank before we left" – A nice tip from Grandpa, but unfortunately not quite contemporary and especially for a trip around the world not really practical. Even travellers' cheques are hardly used by backpackers today, because they are simply too cumbersome in today's world.

It would be much easier with ec-cards: pay comfortably and withdraw money – just like in Germany. Unfortunately, this leads to very high fees outside the eurozone and is simply not possible in many countries due to a lack of Maestro support.

Luckily, however, there is still a very convenient and above all cost-effective alternative, how you can still get or pay your money from almost anywhere in the world: credit cards.

In the course of our backpacking world tour we also discussed the topic of travel credit cards in detail and found one thing above all: there are still a lot of different credit cards with different conditions, additional functions, bonus programs etc. Keeping track of this is not easy.

That's why we asked ourselves:

• Which of these offered features and services of the travel credit card do we really need from this on our world tour?

High cash-back at Zalandoo, on the other hand, probably brings us little on our world tour.

In order to help you choose your travel credit card, we want to show you first of all which criteria are important for your choice.

Afterwards, we will introduce and compare the travel credit cards that we and many other travellers use.

In addition, we advise you to listen to the regional banks near you. Sometimes they have (unexpectedly) attractive offers. This was the case, for example, with Martin, who (as a student) found what he was looking for at the Kreissparkasse (see comparison below).

What is important with a travel credit card?

#01 - Travel Credit Card Provider

The world's most common credit card payment systems are Visa and Mastercard. Even if Mastercard is a little more common, you can pay and withdraw money with each of them almost anywhere in the world. In order to be on the safe side, we recommend that you have both a Mastercard and a Visa Card with you if possible – it is safe to do so.

#02 - Account management and travel credit card fees

Since there are still many banks that provide you with a current account including credit card free of charge, you should make sure that you do not have to pay any account management or credit fees. You should only accept costs here if other factors are much better than the competition and thus compensate for this disadvantage.

#03 - Credit interest on travel credit cards

In times of high interest rates, the amount of credit interest was still an important factor in the account or credit card search. Due to the current low interest rates, however, this factor has lost much of its importance, mainly because the interest rate differentials between the individual banks are now marginal – at least in absolute terms.

Moreover, if your account is just your travel account, where you only have the money you need to travel at the moment and not your entire savings, interest is hardly significant at the moment anyway.

#04 - Mr. Dep.

Dispo interest, what is it? These are the interest you have to pay when you overdraw your account or credit. The longer and the more you overdraw, the more expensive it becomes, of course.

In general, you should make sure that you do not need to use this service, at most if you are sure that you will receive a deposit in a few days and can service the loan again. Otherwise, this (unnecessarily) goes extremely into the money.

Dispo loans are certainly not the ideal way to borrow money in the long term. Therefore, keep your distance from it. In this case, you can virtually ignore the Mr PIS rate factor.

#05 - Cost of cash withdrawal with travel credit cards

In contrast, however, the most important factors are the withdrawal of money and the payment by credit card abroad. Especially in countries where credit card payment is not widely used and is still uncertain, paying in cash is often the only sensible alternative. For this reason, it is important that the fees for withdrawing money from ATMs are as low as possible.

This is also the case with some credit card providers. In this case, you can then withdraw money free of charge from (almost) any ATM – it can hardly be more convenient.

When withdrawing money, however, it should be noted that banks in some countries charge a so-called ATM or external fee if you want to withdraw money from their ATMs. This fee is usually about 5€ per transaction, but only occurs in a few countries such as the USA, Thailand and Taiwan.

Depending on which countries you want to travel to, the refund of vending machine or external fees is therefore of varying relevance to you.

#06 - Cost payment by travel credit card

The situation is similar when paying with your credit card in the euro area. In most cases, a certain proportion of the turnover is charged by your bank as a fee. Even if these are usually not large amounts per transaction, over time this does amount to.

However, for security reasons, we recommend that you avoid paying with a travel credit card, especially in Asia, Africa and South America, if possible. For more details, see later in this article. Depending on which country you want to travel to, this factor is more or less important to you.

#07 Travel Credit Card Limit

Also important is the credit card limit, which determines the amount of money you are allowed to pay or withdraw with your credit card within a certain period of time. This amount should be as adaptable as possible.

In order to increase the credit limit, you can also transfer money to the card with many credit cards. Especially when there are many large payments in a short period of time, this can be very helpful.

#08 - Other Additional Features

As a nice entry you can understand the individual additional features such as cash-back programs and other services. These are very nice, but will rarely have a decisive influence on the choice of travel credit card for your trip around the world.

Detailed comparison of the best travel credit cards

Our credit card comparison

in the overview

Which travel credit card did we choose?

In our comparison, we presented you with four different travel credit cards. With the exception of the travel credit card of the Kreissparkasse (KSK) Waiblingen, these travel credit cards are currently among the most popular among travellers, which is not surprising due to their respective total packages.

We deliberately leave out the travel credit card of KSK Waiblingen, as it is a regional offer for students, where we do not know whether it is offered elsewhere in a similar form. But since we have chosen this travel credit card, among other things, we do not want to withhold it from you and have therefore included it in the comparison. Maybe you have a similar offer.

The following services and conditions were particularly important for our final credit card decision:

• no accounting or credit card fees

• no fees for withdrawing money with the credit card at the ATM

• lowest possible fees for paying with a credit card

• if possible refund of foreign fees when withdrawing money with credit card

For us, however, we were secondary:

• Credit card limits, as each of us has 2 credit cards with us – should be difficult to reach all 4 limits.

• Credit and MRP interest, as we do not have to take them into service.

What is the concrete result of our credit card comparison?

Judging by our above requirements for a travel credit card, there are two winners for us:

• Santander Bank's 1Plus Visa Card*

• TopGiroPlus account of KSK Waiblingen with credit card.

Both credit cards offer these services completely free of charge. One advantage of the KSK credit card for us is that it is a Mastercard.

But also the credit cards from the DKB* and comdirect* fit for our purposes, as they also offer the above-mentioned services free of charge – only external fees are not covered.

Since we have both had a DKB Visa Card* and Martin also ownabe a credit card from KSK Waiblingen for several years now, we wanted to get the 1Plus Visa Card from Santander Bank* for our trip around the world, so that we have a total of 4 credit cards with us. Unfortunately, however, our application was rejected on the grounds that we as students cannot prove a permanent income.

We did a bit of research online and in fact found a few other students who had a similar experience. However, since we have also found counter-examples, we do not know whether or not it was really due to the lack of constant income. It would definitely be understandable.

Nevertheless, you should definitely try it yourself. You can't be more than rejected, just like us.

For this reason, we opened an account with comdirect* and applied for a Visa Card, so that we can now take three Visa Cards (2x DKB, 1x comdirect) and a Mastercard (KSK Waiblingen) on our world tour. We hope that is enough.

Here again our credit card stock at a glance:

• 1x Kreissparkasse Waiblingen TopGiroPlus Credit Card - Mastercard

• 2x DKB Cash Credit Card* - Visa Card

• 1x comdirect credit card* - Visa Card