Best Place To Exchange and Buy Foreign Currency (Online)

If you need to buy currency in the form of cash, you have several expensive options to explore including bureau de change, money change companies, and airport kiosks. Conventional advice often recommends you exchange foreign currency from banks and credit unions, but these charge high fees and weak exchange rates too.

In this guide, we explore where to buy foreign currency before your trip and walk through how to buy currencies with these providers.

Then we offer you better and cheaper alternatives for exchanging currency online including multi-currency accounts like Revolut and Wise.

Where Can I Exchange Foreign Currency Before My Trip?

Many popular websites and sources give bad advice to travelers, international students, and digital nomads alike to exchange currency at banks and credit unions. While these options are preferable to airport kiosks, they are still far from the cheapest and most convenient options.

If you want foreign currency before you board your plane, then we highly recommend you consider opening a multi-currency account like Revolut or Wise straight from your smartphone.

How Do Foreign Currency Purchases Work?

Whether you go to a bank or an airport kiosk to buy currency in the form of cash, you will generally face two fees. Let's quickly break them down:

• Fixed Fees: This is either a flat fee or a percentage of the total transaction amount. Providers charge this fee for their service.
• Exchange Rate Margin: Currency pairs (i.e. USD to EUR) are measured at the mid-market exchange rate. This is the real rate that you want. However, currency exchange services will often apply rates that are weaker than the mid-market exchange rate, and they will pocket the difference. Known as an "exchange rate margin", companies often fail to explain this purposely to levy costs without your knowledge.

When buy foreign currency, traditional providers sometimes advertise their services as "fee-free" because they waive the fixed fee. However, they will still turn a profit with that un-transparent exchange rate margin.

To evaluate how weak their exchange rates are, compare them with the real mid-market exchange rate, which you can easily find on Google, XE.com, or right here on Monito.

How Do I Buy Foreign Currency Online?

In our digital age, it is not uncommon to buy foreign currency online from traditional providers: banks, credit unions, airport kiosks, and other money changers. We still recommend you avoid these methods if you can.

Multi-currency accounts like Revolut and Wise offer the best online alternative. This is because they often exchange your currency at the real mid-market exchange rate. Even more, they charge very low fixed fees that often amount to a few cents or dollars (some even waive the fixed fees too).

Before we compare your options in the later sections, let's go over how to buy a foreign currency online.

Best Place to Buy Foreign Currency Online (While Abroad)

When you are traveling overseas and need to exchange currency, the same rules at home apply abroad: banks, airport kiosks, and money changers conveniently placed in touristic areas will be very expensive. This is why we recommend you find currency exchange services in this order of priority:

1: Exchange Currency With Multi-Currency Accounts

Multi-currency accounts remain the best way to buy foreign currency while abroad because they run completely online. You can link your home bank to the multi-currency account and quickly make local bank transfers (money can usually be transferred on the same day unless you request your transfer on the weekend). Then, the foreign currency exchange in the app will happen instantly.

Revolut

When you buy foreign currency with Revolut's multi-currency tool, you'll never face any fixed fees for your first £1,000 per month.

Their exchange rates usually hover at 0.24% worse than the real mid-market exchange rate, which is very competitive. For these reasons and thanks to the app's ease of use, we recommend Revolut without hesitation.

Read our Revolut Review.

Wise Multi-Currency Account

The Wise Multi-Currency Account is incredible because it will always exchange currency at the real mid-market exchange rate, no matter how much currency you exchange per month.

Its fixed fee is a percentage of the total transaction amount. This fee is very low and ranges from 0.35% to 2.85% — depending on how uncommon the currencies are. If you are buying Euros with USD, for example, then the Wise fee will be only 0.35%.

Read our Wise Multi-Currency Account Review

2: Get Foreign Cash With ATMs Abroad

The cheapest way to get cash while abroad is with a debit card at an ATM. You should either do this with your multi-currency account's debit card or with a debit card that charges zero international card transaction fees.

3: Buy Foreign Currency With Traditional Providers

The only case where buying foreign currency at banks, airport kiosks, and money changers makes sense is if you have non-local currency in cash and want to get rid of it.

For example, if you brought cash euros to the United Kingdom then your euros will not be accepted by local merchants. To exchange those euros for pounds, you will have to go to a bank, airport kiosk, or money changer because these providers accept foreign cash. Digital multi-currency accounts do not accept cash.

Travelex

Travelex is one of the largest bureaux de change companies in the world, found in touristic areas and airports around the world and competes with companies like John Lewis Travel Money and Tesco Travel Money in the UK.

Fixed fees will be higher and exchange rates will be weaker with Travelex than with Revolut or Wise. However, Travelex does offer a multi-currency debit card that you can top up with their online portal. While not as convenient as the neobanks, Travelex's online rates are better than over-the-counter.

Read our Travelex Review.

The Best Place to Exchange Currency After Your Trip

If you've returned home with excess foreign cash, then you will have to resort to your bank, airport kiosk, or physical money changer.

However, these providers may not buy back rarer foreign currencies like Thai baht or Argentinian pesos. They may also reject foreign currency in small amounts, usually anything worth under $100.

Open an Online Multi-Currency Account

The best way to avoid this situation is to use an online multi-currency account for your travels abroad. This is because any foreign currency you have left over on your account can be digitally converted back to your desired currency.

Exchange currency at any denomination back to your home currency (even amounts as little as 50 cents) right from your smartphone.

Travel Tips For Best Places for Foreign Currency Exchange

In summary, here are a few important tips to keep in mind when buying a foreign currency:

• Compare providers on the day you want to buy the currency as some exchange rates will be weaker than others;
• Compare the fixed fees that providers charge as commission for their currency exchange service;
• Avoid airport kiosks above all because they charge the highest commissions and weakest exchange rates;
• Call ahead of time to ensure your provider has less common foreign currency available;
• Consider Revolut or Wise because they buy and sell over 50 foreign currencies.