ATM transactions in Europe

[Stevek7]

Set up a money market account with Capital One Bank. Before you go on a trip, deposit funds in that account that you estimate you will need overseas. Capital One Bank does not charge a fee for an ATM withdrawal from that account.

[tvmovielover]

And Hee to the cindilouwho for her "withdrawal" method from the hands of other ATM users! Schwab for ATM (you almost always need a little local cash AND can use it in US too in a pinch) and Capitol 1 for credit card purchases work for us and yes we tell both when we travel. It does sound like most of us recommending Schwab are long time account holders, however.

[hondorner]

... It does sound like most of us recommending Schwab are long time account holders, however.

I can tell you how long -- initially, I checked out Schwab Bank on the recommendation of another Cruise Critic member, but I was thrilled to discover they called it a "High Yield" checkinbg account, and at that time, they paid almost 5% interest on checking deposits! That was a while ago...:rolleyes:

 

They still call it a "high yield" account but it's now something like 0.1% APY (.001). I guess that's better than nothing...

[babysteps]

We use our local bank debit card, they refund any ATM fees worldwide. Do make sure to give your bank your itinerary so your card won't be blocked for fraud protection.

 

Usually our US debit cards have worked without a hitch in Europe. But Sep 2012 in Spain we found that not all ATMs wanted to talk to our US debit card. Not sure why, but some may not have been live-linked to a system for confirms? And after the first day (2 'unable to process transaction' before found one that worked), we didn't have a problem again - so maybe fraud protection was on US time rather than European...