Quote:
Originally Posted by wpgflamesfan
Get an account with Scotia. They have partnerships with a bunch of banks in Europe and charge you no fees when you do pull money out. So far I've been in London (Barclays), Paris & Nice (BNP Paribas) and Milan,Verona, & Venice (BNL) and have never had a problem finding one of the partner banks or with any over charges. Mastercard/Visa should also work too but i think they charge a small percentage on each purchase.
Here's some more info:
http://www.scotiabank.com/cda/conten..._LIDen,00.html |
This is good and doesn't cost any extra as long as you can find the participating banks (which are usually easy to find in the major countries).
TD also has an account available called Select Service:
http://www.tdcanadatrust.com/accounts/select.jsp. It costs $25 a month, but it includes unlimited fee-free ATM withdrawals at any "Plus" system ATM, which is pretty much any major bank in Europe. RBC has a similar account, but theirs costs $30 a month. You can switch your account type just before you leave, and switch it back to something with cheaper fees once you return.
Without an account that gives you free international transactions, you're going to pay $5 per transaction at any ATM.
One thing to keep in mind with credit cards is they charge a premium on top of the regular bank exchange rate of (I think) 2.5%. I went to Europe 4 years ago so this information may be out of date, but I always tried to keep between 50 and 100 Euro cash on hand and paid for large purchases with my credit cards. When I got home, I did a side-by-side comparison on the exchange rate I paid on any given day where I made both cash withdrawals and credit card purchases, and the credit card rate was always a little more than 2% higher.