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cash passports NB WARNING


PTLF

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Hi there,

I just want to warn people about cash passports. It may not apply to any of you but hopefully I will prevent some of you out there from losing money.

Here's our situation:

We got cash passports from FNB as a convenient way to have cash immediately available at the swipe of a card in Australia. We put a couple of thousands of aussie dollars on our cards. It sounded like the a good solution - a card with a password was safer than carrying cash.

Unfortunately the card would 70% of the time be rejected and have "errors". When re-swiping and re-swiping it still got rejected and we had to find another way to pay. The horror of the story comes when we looked online to see how much $ was left - we found that every time we swiped (even when it was rejected), it was charged and subtracted that amount from our card! So now we have fees subtracted from the card for things that we couldn't buy because of errors. This error has happened frequently at all grocery stores and public services, so I can't blame this on a faulty or fraudulent swiping machine . We didn't pick up on this because 30% of the time the card worked just fine at first swipe.

We went to an Aussie cash passport outlet but they can't help us because the card is from FNB in SA, and they advised us to talk to our supplier. We have emailed and phoned FNB weeks ago and they have referred us to different people in different departments who all cannot help us. We are still waiting and calling..

So hubby's card is all empty of cash. We have lost thousands of dollars because of a faulty card...

Thanks South Africa...

We are open to any suggestions...

PTLF

xxx

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Hi PTLF, does the cash passport system have a chargeback option like credit cards do? If it does, that might be the way to go?

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So sorry to hear about your misfortune. It is hard, especially when you're hard-earned cash gets taken away like that and you're thousand of miles away and cannot just go into your nearest FNB branch. It must be very frustrating! Hopefully you can get this sorted quickly and get a positive outcome. Keep us posted.

We used the Standard Bank Travel Wallet when we arrived in Australia. Didn't have any issues with it, thank goodness!

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I just used my South African credit card. When I asked Standard Bank the direct question of "is a prepaid travel card cheaper than using my credit card?". There reply was " It depends on many factors such as the charges levied by the banks in Australia. But, yes, it may well be cheaper".

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I used an Australian issued travel card in the USA, it took me a couple of times to work out that I have to use it the same as a credit card, NOT a debit card, for it to work.

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That is terrible that you have lost so much money! I really hope that some one at FNB can help you out soon.

We used a Bidvest cash passport and it didn't work all the time. Eventually we also figured out to select the credit option.

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I have used Cash Passport over the years and never had any issues with the cards, its a very convenient way of carrying your money if you don't have a bank account in the country you are visiting.

I am not sure why you would not have opened an account online and transfer the funds into that account.

Once you are verified at the bank , you can get access to your money straight away.

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  • 10 months later...

We are going over in March 2016 to activate or 189 visas and I need to sort out how we are going to work our money/cash situation.

 

Any further advise from anyone on the best way to go? I have an FNB platinum cheque and credit card.

From what I can see:

FNB Cash Passport charges 1.85% commision upfront when loading.

Using FNB credit card charges 2.75% comm.

Drawing cash with FNB cheque card R30 + R1.65 per R100 + 2.75% comm. + any applicable Aussie ATM fees

 

So seems Cash passport is best, but sounds like its not very reliable? 

 

Regarding Enrica's idea of opening an Aussie bank account. If we are only activating visas in March for two weeks,  can we open accounts if we only intend to move over for good in early 2017? 

 

thanks

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Hi @Wannagonow

 

What about the global account from FNB? You can buy Aussie Dollars from now to hedge against the exchange rate and once you have a Aussie bank account open you can cam do a Swift transfer to send the funds electronically. There are fees though a commission of like 0.52% and a swift fee of like R105.

 

Check it out under the Forex tab of online banking.

 

So maybe a combo of cash passport in beginning and then you can send rest of your funds once you open a bank account down under

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Why not just open an Australian bank account online. Transfer funds over with FX capital and when you get here go to the Aus bank and in roughly 10 mins you will have your debit cards which you can use here.

 

Alternatively when travelling I have always just used my SA credit cards and never had any issues . I have heard plenty of people who had problems using cash passports hence.the reason why I have never opted to use them.

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13 hours ago, emma.yenkanna said:

Why not just open an Australian bank account online. Transfer funds over with FX capital and when you get here go to the Aus bank and in roughly 10 mins you will have your debit cards which you can use here.

 

Alternatively when travelling I have always just used my SA credit cards and never had any issues . I have heard plenty of people who had problems using cash passports hence.the reason why I have never opted to use them.

I agree with emma.yenkanna. We have travelled quite a lot and prefer the convenience of a credit card. We will also be opening up an Australian bank account ahead of our activation trip and then activating the account while there. It also helps to try and start moving money before rand slides further. We also use FX capital for forex transfers

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On 1/12/2016 at 0:13 AM, emma.yenkanna said:

Why not just open an Australian bank account online. Transfer funds over with FX capital and when you get here go to the Aus bank and in roughly 10 mins you will have your debit cards which you can use here.

 

Alternatively when travelling I have always just used my SA credit cards and never had any issues . I have heard plenty of people who had problems using cash passports hence.the reason why I have never opted to use them.

 

On 1/13/2016 at 1:26 PM, JackoFam said:

I agree with emma.yenkanna. We have travelled quite a lot and prefer the convenience of a credit card. We will also be opening up an Australian bank account ahead of our activation trip and then activating the account while there. It also helps to try and start moving money before rand slides further. We also use FX capital for forex transfers

 

 

Exactly what we did. Zero hassles. 100% convenient. We picked up our CommBank cards a day after we landed, used them throughout the trip, and have been able to 'stash' money in Aus ever since.

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  • 1 month later...

So did the FNB global account thing and while they give great commision to transfer large amounts in one go, be aware about trying to use this as an option for making smaller payments to Aus. They charged me R105 SWIFT fee and R140 SWIFT commision for each transaction (was paying deposit for Air BnB accomodation).  There is also an option when making these payments that the fees 'on the other side' be charged to my account, I thought this was the right thing to do (so as not to reduce the sellers actual income) so ticked yes, bang another R500 bucks in FX fees gone, thank you very much! So I have paid nearly R1,000 in fees/comm. for altogether R15,000 worth of transactions. Ouch, you live and learn! 

 

I think the FNB Global thing is great for big transfers (but may not be as good as specialist FX ppl) but for the small stuff, use your credit card.......

 

(I have opened my NAB migrant account and will be transferring the balance of my FNB Global AUD account to that soon, hope its not as expensive. Have set up a meeting the day after we land to collect our debit cards)

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  • 2 months later...

Hi there, 

 

I also have a Fnb global account and plan to transfer one bulk sum over. I have a question not completely related to this topic, but perhaps someone here will be able to assist me. I am receiving an error message when creating a new forex payment to my Nab account, it seems to be a problem with the swift/branch code combination. Have anyone else experienced this? 

Thanks 

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Hi Numb3rgirl

 

Had exactly the same issue. I think its because they dont seem to use IBAN numbers in Aus. 

 

I did manage to succeed in transferring from my FNB global to my NAB account (took about three days nervous waiting to clear). Cant remember the exact procedure I used on the FNB internet banking but it was something along the lines of combining the BSB (bank, state, branch) and account number? I think I did this where they ask for the IBAN number? See this link as well from NAB website :

http://www.nab.com.au/personal/international/receive-money-from-overseas

Sorry I cant be more specific as to how I did it but hope this helps.

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