£122 Million Credit Card Swizzle. How To Spend Your Holiday Money More Wisely.

One in five Britons use credit cards overseas, but with £1.5 billion being paid on plastic while abroad last year, Brits racked up a whopping £122m in unnecessary credit card charges. That is crazy, and here is why.

Zero Charge Cards

You can use the Santander Zero card for free abroad, no matter where you go in the world, so why not get one and get saving?

Pay off your bills before you start getting charged interest otherwise you face an 18.9 per cent charge.

The only other card to not charge you for using it abroad is the Post Office Classic Mastercard. Again, there is no foreign usage loading no matter where you are in the world. But if you cannot pay the bill before you face the interest charge, you would be paying a higher rate at 19.9 per cent.

The one advantage this has over the Santander Zero is a lower interest rate on cash withdrawals – at 26.9 per cent compared to Santander’s 27.9 per cent. But given how high these charges are anyway, you should not use them to withdraw cash at all.

The Credit Card For Cash Withdrawals

The only card with no interest charged on cash withdrawals comes from Hoare & Co. The Hoare & Co Visa card also has a relatively low 16.1 per cent interest rate, but you would have foreign usage fees of 2.5 per cent for using this abroad.