NAB Traveller Card

I first purchased a NAB Travel Card to use while holidaying in Italy in 2014 and experienced all the benefits of this Card after it was stolen!

I originally purchased the card after receiving a promotional brochure from NAB (I was already a customer), and was attracted by its benefits of carrying foreign currencies to avoid the more expensive credit card conversion fees, and because it promised fast replacement if lost or stolen overseas.

The card allows a variety of foreign currencies to be loaded by simple transfer from your NAB savings account to the NAB Traveller Card via internet banking. This feature allows simple top-up and balance checks via internet banking. Originally topping up was done with Bill Pay, but the current system is even easier.

The card is a MasterCard and has always been well received when touring through Europe, from Ireland and Portugal in the west to Turkey in the east, and paying in euros and British pounds. I have also used it to pay advance travel costs on line when the currency required was in euros!

Unfortunately, I had a disturbing experience while travelling in Peru. Before I obtained a NAB Traveller card, a bank ATM in Peru took the Australian credit/cash card without returning it, the bank opened in 3 hours but the tour group was leaving immediately. A replacement card could only be delivered to an Australian home address! Fortunately, I had a spare card.

With this experience in mind, I took up the offer to obtain a NAB Traveller Card for the next holiday to Italy, with its promise of speedy card replacement wherever in the world. It also has the duplicate card feature, which gives you two cards, with a spare to activate in event the original is lost or stolen.

Unfortunately, my card was stolen in Rome, along with its spare, both contained in my backpack within my hire car, while i was standing beside it, thanks to a well orchestrated team theft at the hire car pickup point at Rome Termini Station. (Moral of the story is keep one card in you hand carry/wallet, and the backup card separately in your main luggage!)

I reported the theft within the hour to the 24 hour NAB Traveller Card emergency number, the cards were then cancelled and the funds quarantined. The operator, who I believe was in London, arranged to have new cards issued, and delivered to the hotel where I was booked in three days time. I continued the holiday and on arrival, replacement cards were waiting for me at hotel reception, with my cash reloaded and ready to go.

It is a brilliant system and I was pleased with the great response, although I never expected I would ever need it.

Well done NAB Traveller Card.

I used the card extensively in the USA (San Francisco, LA etc). It worked every time. Easy to load via the NAB app - instant and no extra fees except the initial slightly poor conversion rate ~3% to USD. As long as you load to USD and not leave it in AUD, then everything it smooth. And select "Credit" if asked - then all is ok.

I could not change my pin once my card expired and had to use one which the bank gave me. Terrible service too because the person on the phone gave me a different set of instructions to what I was told when I talked to the person in my local branch.

I don’t see the point to this card as it doesn’t work anywhere. I have tried over a dozen ATM machines in Europe and yet to be able to withdraw money. I have 300€ sitting in my account that I can’t access. Useless, pointless, don’t waste your time.

I have $3000 AUD sitting in my NAB account and everytime I go to "manage" my NAB traveller so I can transfer my money it crashes. So I am now in a foreign country (UK) with NO money. This has only just started doing this. Over the past few months I've had no issues.

If you want to purchase a card so you can pay for things whilst you are on holidays anywhere in Australia or Overseas I would recommend using a Westpac Global Card since it is more secure and you don't need to worry about being scammed also there is no fees whatsoever.

Ridiculous fees and just does not work. I get caught out in every country simply because the app won't load. Has "problem retrieving your travel card"

Do not recommend to anyone.

I was using this card in New Zealand, some small merchants in woop woop town don't take any foreign cards. so I ended up using an atm nearby and they changed me 10 backs AUD just to take out cash. and the ATM convert my NZ dollars back to AUD and then spit out the NZD I need. what a waste of time.

oh and the NAB internet banking statement doesn't exactly tell you how much I have been charged for the ATM withdraw its just say PURSE CURRENCY CONVERSION FEE with no amount on it.

It was a Westpac machine with a master card logo by the way. so this is all B.S. most places accept credit cards anyway. and yes there is a 3% credit card transaction fee but the exchange rates are so much better than NAB. NAB charging more for their currency exchange.

if I have to waste my time to do research on which ATM to go take cash out, what's the point on all the stress and time wasting just to use a damn card that is supposed to be convenient.

next time if I need foreign cash I may just bring AUD and exchange cash at the airport.

I'm in Tokyo right now, half way through a 14 day trip. The NAB app says I have 220 yen available, but if I go to the manage account section, it says I have over 26000 yen. This is because these transactions are still ongoing. I called the helpline for information on when the last of it will be available and they tell me it will be done in a month! For a transaction made yesterday!

And this transaction already shows up on my account history, a long with some others. Crunching the numbers by subtracting these from my memory of my previous reload (another dumb feature-they don't show credit, only debit) I should have about 7000 yen available. Where did that go?!

Don't buy.

Reading all these negative reviews leads me to believe that many people don’t understand ‘Managing Money Overseas 101’ at all and are blaming a product for their own ignorance.

Most cards, not just this one, attract a fee from the overseas host banks' ATM unless you do your homework first and find out which banks in the country you are going to will allow you to use (in this case) Mastercard free of charge. So you check that out first and either make a list/map or just keep your eye out whilst cruising around. If you are in any particular country for a while you soon get an eye for the ATM’s that won’t charge you. Incredibly simple if you put your brain in gear rather than blaming a product because you didn’t do your homework, it’s not rocket science. Yes, that gets trickier if you are going to be using cards for a lot of purchases rather than just taking cash out of ATM’s and if there are charges associated with purchases. Therefore canny travellers carry different cards for different situations, as well as for the security of having different ways of accessing resources when things get a bit sticky.

The advantage of this kind of card is that you don’t get charged a fee by your own bank (in this case NAB) for using an OS ATM which is what happens with many Debit and Credit cards. This fee from many Oz banks is additional to the foreign banks’ ATM charges which you may have incurred if you didn’t do your homework, used the wrong machine and got charged. These Australian banks’ charges for using OS ATM’s were previously rolled into the same line on your bank statement as the fee you were getting charged by the OS bank so not everyone realized they were being charged to use a Debit or Credit card OS by their own bank. Not sure what the current situation with this is as I don't get any of these charges anymore now that I have this NAB card I don't incur those charges from Oz bank.

This is the reason to use these kind of preloaded cards rather than Debit or Credit cards in my opinion. If you do a lot of OS transactions involving getting cash out of ATMs you save a bucket on fees charged by Oz banks by using one of these products which doesn’t charge the fees that debit and credit cards attract.

All banks as far as I can tell, not just Australia banks, charge higher exchange rates than those you find using search engines. Been that way since long before this or any other travel card came into existence, so yes, if you do any money changing through a bank it will cost you more (and be safer) than changing money on the street or through most other methods. Not the fault of any travel card nor even the NAB.

When you log into your NAB online banking their exchange rate is sitting right there in front of your eyes to see. NAB is the only one of the four banks (3 of them Oz banks) I use that have this information so conveniently situated. Once you get in the swing of things this can actually be useful because when and by what method you transfer money to your travel card affects the exchange rate you get and you can use what you see when you log onto your NAB banking as a guide to which way rates are going at the very least.

Currency conversion rates are what they are, it’s always expensive to change from one to another and even more so if you change from A to B in order to get to C (particularly if C is unsupported currency!). Not unique to this card but cost can be avoided altogether by forward thought and planning. NAB website lists the supported currencies and order in which they are taken off your card. Not a mystery of the universe.

Sometimes ATM’s don’t accept Mastercard (in this case). Check the symbols on the ATM. If the ATM says the card is invalid research which banks accept Mastercard, try another ATM and/or find a bank branch, try the card in the ATM outside and if it doesn't work go inside and enquire with them. Banks are indeed banks the world over however in my vast experience most will make some effort to help if you are using a product (in this case Mastercard) they support and in my experience in most cities they will have an employee who has some English, even if only a little.

Of all the travel cards I investigated (all of which were either Visa or Mastercard) this was the only one that could be linked to my internet banking account so I don’t have to go to a separate site to see it which for me is a massive bonus and why I chose this particular card. Well done NAB!!

I am a binational citizen who spends a lot of time in regions of the world where ATM’s are quite a new thing and where cards are not widely accepted for anything other than ATMs. Even when accepted for some reason relating to configurations of POS I think my credit cards often don’t work in POS machines and I've never tried my NAB card in them.

I use credit cards to pay for all travel bookings because I think its more straightforward and less risky in terms of trying to get money back when things go wrong. Tripsavvy and other sites advise using credit cards for hotel bookings for a variety of reasons some of them related to issues blamed on NAB travel card in reviews on this site.

We carry NAB travel cards as the ONLY way to get cash which is primarily what we use for the majority of payments, purchases and living expenses. Over a few years have saved probably at least a thousand dollars by using this card rather than any other of our Debit/Credit cards for getting cash out – have never been charged a fee because we use the right ATM’s, not the wrong ones. When possible to use a card to make a purchase I use my credit card as that is more likely to work in POS machines (not the fault of NAB, just a widespread issue in some regions) and less of a hassle in terms of not having to be constantly finding secure internet to be doing top ups (because I personally have more credit than cash). Have never yet had a single problem with this card, hope saying that doesn't jinx me!

I try everything new out before I leave Oz - not just cards - just to make sure it works. Saves upsets on the road.

Love having this card linked directly into my NAB internet banking.

Do your homework before you go folks, it saves unnecessary costs on the road and uninformed tanties on review sites.

Please do not use this card AT ALL! I travelled around USA and stayed at multiple hotels. After using the NAB Traveller Card for deposits, I got none of them back. I have called and emailed them for over 3 months and they still refuse to do anything about it. The NAB app also never works so you can never check your balance properly! So, unless you want to lose more than $500AUD on hotel deposits, I definitely do not recommend using this card.

I traveled all through Europe on my newly activated NAB traveler card. Having been strictly a Commbank user previously, I decided to open up a brand new card with NAB purely for my overseas holiday as the card appeared to have the lowest overall fees and costs associated with it. Was fairly easy to activate it, and no costs associated with loading money or transferring money (which is a plus) however I was charged a purchase convenience fee on almost every single one of my transactions overseas, which amounted to just shy of EUR 100 in fees alone for using the card to purchase things. That doesn't include the additional ATM fees I found I was charged at just about every ATM I used it at to withdraw money (some to the amount of EUR 15 just to withdraw at an ATM)!! Overall, while the card didn't cost much to activate it's actually cost a lot to operate so I would have been much better going for the ING travel card which doesn't issue any fees to users from what I'm told (even to withdraw at any ATM overseas). The ING Travel Card will be the card I use next time, as the NAB one really didn't live up to the reputation.

hi.. trying to print out statement too check a recent trip in asia …3.5k put through account, it wont load statements at the nab branch.. and it wont load staments from a brand new desktop...from my nab login account... this isn't the first time plus I had the same problem 18 months ago...when I called it was emailed quickly.. but WHY DO I HALF TOO MAKE THE CALL... AND WHY DO I HALF TOO WRITE THIS REVIEW..GET YOU ACT TOGETHER... NAB..(what are you hiding????) cannot review my account online instantly...

Peter

I am in Tokyo trying to get money. Have emailed the NAB back in Australia 2 days ago. No reply yet. Hate to be desperate but getting that way. I keep being told by ATMs that my card is invalid. It is a brand new card. I hope I get help soon.

Used the card in Singapore and still had around $500 left on it when I returned to Australia. Forgot about the card for 6 months and when I checked the balance before travelling again it was zero. Checking the transactions I saw that there were nearly 100 transactions of small random amounts being withdrawn from it over the period all showing debits from Apple Sydney Australia, which wouldn't not have been possible to make myself using the traveller card, looking closer I saw that my credit card also had the same transactions that had commenced around the same time. NAB acknowledged my accounts were hacked and refunded me the amount in full but it took 12 months and numerous calls and emails, difficult to do from overseas due to the time difference. Card has real security issues and exchange rate/fees are a disgrace, would never consider using again. Beware.

I was advised that this would be a good option for travelling around Europe. I was advised by the teller to make sure I always use the Nab's conversion rate as opposed to the local one. I have come to realise this is due to the fact that they offer a significantly lower rate than the market does, obviously pocketing the profits.

I was also not advised of the horrendous 4% conversion fee that applies when you convert to a non-supported currency. And I did not realise how much I was being charged as the amounts of these fees for some reason do not appear on any transaction statements. Clearly an attempt to hide how much they are ripping you off.

I travelled to Italy and Ireland and had no problems paying for items with the NAB Traveller Card - it was accepted everywhere from ATM's (no extra fees), small shops, supermarkets, small cafes, restaurants etc. It was an easy and convenient way to pay for items and keep track of my expenses. It was great to know I had a back up card in case my primary card got lost or stolen (which didn't happen) and I can keep the remaining funds on the card until my next trip without monthly fees. I could check the balance on my IPad. The downside is the cost of transferring Australian dollars to other currencies.

If you use this card at an ATM in Koh Samui you will be hit with a 220 baht fee. That's almost 10 dollars. My card is going in the bin.

Travelled to Europe and used the card to withdraw cash in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Croatia and Czech Republic with no problems. Had the NAB app so could check on our balance at any time. Loaded up the card with the pound and Euro and it was all so easy. Exchange rate initially wasn’t great but comparable to other banks. We had some money left when we came home and just transferred across to our debit card. when withdrawing cash overseas just be careful of fees charged by ATMs and stick to the major ones.

The fact that they set their own exchange rate is absolutely ridiculous! What a scam. I got a better deal withdrawing the money with my regular nab card ( including the atm fees) because the exchange rate was at least current. What's the point NAB?!? Closing my account asap because of this.