The short version
Ranked by what your pounds buy
The travel-card table is ordered by the effective rate: how much of the currency you picked you actually get per pound, after the card’s own fee. The card that buys you the most sits at the top — as long as we have measured its live rate.
We compare that against a live “real rate” (the mid-market rate) so you can see the exchange-rate margin. A “no fees” label is not the same as a good rate.
What the numbers mean
Every column on the travel-card table, in plain English, and where the figure comes from.
| What you see | What it means | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Real rate | What £1 is actually worth in the currency you picked — the mid-market rate, not a customer quote. | The middle of three live mid-market feeds we collect through the day: Wise, HSBC CurrencyZone and Currensea’s interbank rate. |
| Exchange rate | What that card actually buys you, after its own fee. | Visa cards use Visa’s published calculator, Mastercard cards use Mastercard’s, and Wise, Revolut and Currensea cards use those providers’ own converters, plus any plan fee. Trading 212 uses the live interbank / mid-market rate on weekdays and Mastercard at the weekend. |
| Margin | The gap between the real rate and what the card pays you. | Worked out from the effective rate versus the real rate. Shown as a percentage and as how much less local currency you get. |
| Estimated | We do not yet track that card’s live rate for the currency you picked. | The real rate minus the card’s published foreign-currency fee. Estimated rows sit below every measured card and can never be shown as the best rate. |
| Best card | The highest measured effective rate for the currency you picked. | Only cards we have actually measured can win. An estimate is never crowned, even if the published fee is 0%. |
| Chart and 30–90 day stats | How that currency has moved recently — context, not the ranking. | ECB daily GBP cross rates. This is a different figure from the live median used to rank the table. |
| Fallback note | The live median is unavailable, so the comparison is running on a backup. | The ECB’s daily rate, flagged on the page so you can see the table is degraded. |
The sources
Where the exchange rates come from
We do not invent rates. We collect the figures those companies publish — the same converters a customer can open — and refresh them through the day. Each card is then priced on the feed it actually uses.
The real rate
Three independent mid-market feeds: Wise, HSBC CurrencyZone, and Currensea’s interbank rate. We take the middle of those three. That is the “Real rate today” line on the table — not a bank’s customer quote.
Visa and Mastercard cards
A Visa card is priced on Visa’s published exchange-rate calculator. A Mastercard card uses Mastercard’s. We collect those from the public converters Visa and Mastercard show travellers, then take off any extra fee the card issuer adds.
Wise, Revolut and Currensea
Those cards do not use Visa or Mastercard’s scheme rate. We collect the rate from each provider’s own converter, including any plan fee they publish for the amount you typed in.
When a row says Estimated
We do not yet have that card’s live converter rate for the currency you picked. We take the real rate, subtract the card’s published foreign-currency fee, and keep the row below every measured card.
Open a card for the dated source on that row.
Worth knowing
A few things the table cannot say on its own
Why a live median, not only the ECB
Card rates move through the day. The ECB publishes one fix per working day, so over a weekend it can sit a couple of days behind. That lag is enough to make a card look level with the real rate when it is not. We use a live median instead, and only fall back to the ECB when that feed is missing — with a note on the page.
0% fee is not the real rate
A card can charge no issuer fee and still sit below the real rate. Visa, Mastercard and some provider converters add their own margin. That gap is the exchange-rate margin — a cost, even when the fee column says free.
The chart is not the ranking
The 30- and 90-day chart uses the ECB’s daily GBP cross rates so every currency in the picker has a history. The table ranks against today’s live median. They will not always match, and that is expected.
Terms are checked by hand
Provider fees and conditions are checked manually. Each rate is dated and sourced in the card’s details view, so you can see when we last looked and which feed it came from.
What the table does not include
- Merchant or ATM dynamic currency conversion — always pay in the local currency, not pounds.
- Weekend, fair-use or cash-machine fees that some cards add on top of the exchange rate.
- The rate changing between authorisation and settlement. The figure you see is the live rate at the time we checked it.
Always confirm the details with the provider before you apply. Terms can change.
Back to travel cards
See the live table, pick a currency, and rank cards by what your pounds actually buy.
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