28° Mastercard Cash Advances while overseas [No more free cash advances from 1/1/14]

[lovetravellingoz]

While Wizard is great for Cash Advances and in particular when ATM Fees are factored in as well, it is not necesarrily the best card for all you CC purchases depending on what value you give to your FF point earn.

As a trial I just bought two Amtrax Tickets online for my upcoming USA Trip on two different Cc within minutes of each other.


$US 66 = $Aus74.34 on Krisflyer Amex with $A2.50 fee included.

This earns 222 points to SQ = $ 4 to 8 currently as earn rate is 3 points per $
. (when back on 1.5 - $ 2 to 4). So effectively the tx cost me $66 to 70. After Oct 31 it would effectively cot me $70-72.

$ US68 on Wizard Clear = $ 74.52 .

Caveat: This is only one sample.

 

[serfty]

Absolutely; cash advances are where it's best.

(Note the Thread's title)

 

[sriver]

So can someone confirm that a Wizard Mastercard payment of an item via paypal in US dollars is a better option than using default paypal conversion?

Paypal conversion was .88cents
Wizard costs: ????

This month I did an ebay transaction and decided to use the Wizard card to check the difference.

After getting the bill back and crunching the numbers I believe the Wizard card saved me about 0.15 AUD.

I deleted my little excel sheet I used to work it out because the difference was so little but here's the numbers off my statement (this was an ebay purchase from the US by the way):

Date: October 4th
USD: 36.87
Rate 1.166531

AUD charge: 43.01

HTH

 

[serfty]

Hi sriver, welcome to AFF.

Using the Xe.com credit card charge calculator (www.xe.com/ccc) indicates a variance of .73% from the mid-market cross rates.

 

[moa999]

Hi sriver, welcome to AFF.
Using the Xe.com credit card charge calculator (www.xe.com/ccc) indicates a variance of .73% from the mid-market cross rates.

Understand that cards typically use the most favourable rate (to them) from a number of sources, so would expect that there will always be some negative variance from the xe.com mid-market rates.

That said I have had a few posititve experiences.

 

[zzyss]

Once upon a time, it took at least three working days for payments to be received on the Wizard card. Now it goes in overnight

Is that using the account number, or the BPay code and your card number? I did the latter on Wednesday and it still hasn't shown up in my account yet as of today :-(

 

[Baysider]

Just returned from Singapore and coughet, where I used the Wizard Mastercard for cash advances, will try to summarise and post the conversion rates shortly. I can confidently state, without even doing any calculations, that it was more cost effective than a Cirrus withdrawal in Singapore from my Westpac savings account.

Well, I forgot all about posting this info, didn't I, so here we go. Interbank rates are from www.oanda.com/convert/classic. ALL fees and charges are included in the % stated.
Wizard Clear Advantage Mastercard Cash Advances
Date Amount % Difference to Interbank Rate
24/6/09 --- SGD 200 --- 1.0% *
25/6/09 --- SGD 200 --- 0.7%
27/6/09 --- THB 5000 --- 0.4%
28/6/09 --- THB 5000 --- 0.6%
29/6/09 --- THB 5000 --- 0.4%
30/6/09 --- THB 900 --- 0.5%
30/6/09 --- SGD 500 --- 0.15%
02/7/09 --- SGD 200 --- 1.9% *
03/7/09 --- SGD 150 --- 0.9%
* these 2 higher conversion fees were from a different ATM

Citibank Platinum Visa Card
30/6/09 --- THB 2530 --- 3.8%

Westpac Cirrus Withdrawal (Savings Account)
6/07/09 --- SGD 500 --- 3.0% (1.8% excluding $5 O/S ATM fee)

The Wizard Card is a stand out winner !!

 

[zzyss]

Here's the stats from my recent trip to HK. To be consistent with the poster above I'll use the OANDA interbank rates as well - I've used very crude rounding, but the percentages are so small. Where a percentage is followed by a + sign I got a higher rate from Wizard than the published rate??

Cash withdrawals

02/11/2009 --- HKD1000 --- 0.0038
03/11/2009 --- HKD5000 --- 0.12+
05/11/2009 --- HKD1000 --- 0.00026
06/11/2009 --- HKD5800 --- 0.0031
12/11/2009 --- HKD7000 --- 0.0075+


Credit purchases - Westpac Altitude Amex Platinum
(Includes FX fee)

03/11/2009 --- HKD1767 --- 0.0327
13/11/2009 --- HKD539.10 --- 0.0171
16/11/2009 --- HKD1627.40 --- 0.0407

I still have no idea how / how best to use the Altitude points, so I have no idea what to value them at, so leave them out of this discussion for now


EDIT: hope I'm doing this correctly? What I've done is to take the amount in AUD that was charged to Wizard, and dividing it against the amount in AUD on the OANDA site... Not sure why the credit card percentages are so low, even when taking the fee into consideration...

 

[serfty]

...
EDIT: hope I'm doing this correctly? What I've done is to take the amount in AUD that was charged to Wizard, and dividing it against the amount in AUD on the OANDA site... Not sure why the credit card percentages are so low, even when taking the fee into consideration...

Try this tool: XE - Credit Card Charges Calculator .

 

[zzyss]

Try this tool: XE - Credit Card Charges Calculator .

Cool, thanks. Well according to XE, I was charged the following fees:

Credit purchases - Westpac Altitude Amex Platinum
(Includes FX fee)

03/11/2009 --- HKD1767 --- 2.790%
13/11/2009 --- HKD539.10 --- 3.679%
16/11/2009 --- HKD1627.40 --- 4.514%

*shrug* I don't know why it kept getting higher over time...

 

[odysseus]

Cool, thanks. Well according to XE, I was charged the following fees:

Credit purchases - Westpac Altitude Amex Platinum
(Includes FX fee)

03/11/2009 --- HKD1767 --- 2.790%
13/11/2009 --- HKD539.10 --- 3.679%
16/11/2009 --- HKD1627.40 --- 4.514%

*shrug* I don't know why it kept getting higher over time...

It really depends when prices are struck. The sites referred to only show one rate throughout the day when in reality the rates fluctuate continually over that time. Thus, the fee itself is not changing, just the difference between the price when the actual transaction went through vs the price shown on the web site (which is unaffiliated with the credit card companies) differs by varying degrees.

 

[spaswink]

I have what may be a silly question:

My WCA mastercard is currently $2000 in credit (recently bpayed $2000 onto it) with a $1500 credit limit.

Today I tested it by withdrawing $20 from an atm, after which the ATM displayed the balance as $3500 with $1480 available.

I selected the 'credit' option on the ATM, was this the right thing to do for a cash advance? I'm a bit confused by the '$1480 available' amount.

Do cash advance withdrawals through an ATM automatically take the money from the amount I have put on the card (the $2000), as opposed to the credit available (1500)? Is there even any distinction?

Sorry, this may have been addressed somewhere in the thread but I would greatly appreciate any clarification. Heading overseas in 3 days!

 

[Mal]

My WCA mastercard is currently $2000 in credit (recently bpayed $2000 onto it) with a $1500 credit limit.

Today I tested it by withdrawing $20 from an atm, after which the ATM displayed the balance as $3500 with $1480 available.

Welcome to AFF. There should be some recent posts which help explain this. For example:

http://www.frequentflyer.com.au/com...d-cash-advances-while-6960-10.html#post267834

Earlier in the thread, there are some other posts which should explain this pretty clearly.

My understanding is that you can withdraw up to $1000 / day, and up to your credit limit every couple of days. Your credit limit is then reset.

This is how it used to operate a couple of years ago:
http://www.frequentflyer.com.au/com...rd-cash-advances-while-6960-4.html#post206679

But I'm pretty sure it's now changed to resetting every couple of days as the transactions post to the account.

 

[zzyss]

My WCA mastercard is currently $2000 in credit (recently bpayed $2000 onto it) with a $1500 credit limit.

My recent experience with the card (see the posts above yours) was that:

- Yes, you press "credit" for cash withdrawals (cash advance)
- The amount "available" is your credit limit, because you can't withdraw more than that until your withdrawals are processed (which in my experience took 3 days)

As an example, if you withdrew AU$1000 (the maximum permitted) on the first day, then $500 on the second day, then day 3 you won't be able to draw anything 'coz you've maxed out your credit card, so to speak. But then on the 4th day you will be able to draw $1000 again 'coz your first transaction will have gone through... and so on...

EDIT: Ah, FYI - on day 4 you can draw $1000, but that would mean you're using $500 of Wizard's money, for which you'll be charged interest. In other words, you should only withdraw $500 on day 4 in order to avoid having to pay interest.

A word of caution though: be mindful of the timezone differences as well. Transactions are processed during Australian business hours, so the "3 day" thing might be longer depending on what time and where you are.

EDIT 2: another thing I noticed in Hong Kong - find an ATM that doesn't have a local currency limit. I found some machines would only allow me withdraw HK$1000, whereas in theory I should have been able to get up to HK$7000 in one withdrawal. Stick with the major banks' ATMs.

Hope that helps, and welcome to AFF.

 

[spaswink]

Ahh that's good, I think i get it.

The "$1480 available" amount had me a bit worried that maybe using the Credit option on the ATM meant i was bypassing the money I had loaded on and withdrawing from the credit (thus incurring interest etc).

This probably shows how little I know about credit cards, but oh well.

Thanks for the advice!

 

[Flashback]

BTW, welcome to AFF spaswink!

 

[blackraven777]

hi guys, first time poster - just found this forum I hope it helps!

i picked up the wizard mastercard a few months ago and booked my overseas trip with it no problems - I wanted to use it to withdraw money while overseas (i have the card in credit $1500)

i go to the atm, put in my pin, select credit, select the amount and say yes to the $2 atm charge - but then it says the transaction is "inappropriate" and cannot be completed

anyone have an idea what might be going wrong? I'm not 100% sure I got my pin right, but it wouldn't have let me go any further with an incorrect pin, right?

any help or previous experiences would be much appreciated! thanks

 

[serfty]

Hi blackraven777, welcome to AFF.

To help you I guess some more information is required.

• What country?
• What Currency?
• Where was the ATM located?
• How much were you taking out (not exact - an approximation is fine)?

 

[blackraven777]

I'm in America, looking to take out about $100 US dollars

the ATM was in a 7-11 - it had the mastercard and other signs on it - should I go to a particular bank's atm perhaps?

 

[serfty]

I have had little issue in using my WCA in the states. Yes, some ATM's didn't like the card but that seemed often to do with the account selection options.

Sometimes using "Fast Cash" with default account worked better than specifying "credit". Or find another ATM.

Once in Kyoto Railway station in Japan I was in a room with maybe 12 ATMs and the 8th one I tried worked.