How do I spend money in Sweden and Denmark?
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 19 Jul, 2023
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Bring more than one card. Especially in Sweden a lot of people never use cash but if you only have one card and lose it you have a problem, especially as a tourist. So get a second card and leave it in your luggage while your primary card is in our wallet or similar.
I would get a card from one of the newer “Fintech” providers that are competing on cost in the foreign payments market. They tend to have low fees, and they are also transparent on any extra they are charging on top of the mid-market exchange rate. That’s a notional fair rate where you could convert money from one currency into another and immediately back again with no losses. Most banks and traditional foreign exchange providers will use different “Buy” and “Sell” prices and if you’re making a card payment it’ll be hard to find out in advance how much they differ from each other.
A downside of these providers is that they provide debit cards (less consumer protection) and they don’t have the infrastructure of traditional banks for dealing with problems – e.g. there are reports of people’s cards being blocked and it being difficult to get them unblocked quickly. So don’t completely rely on them.
Examples of newer providers are Revolut and Transferwise (I use both but have no other affiliation).
Also, if a merchant offers to charge you in USD, it’s usually best to refuse the option. The rates will be worse than you’d get even from your own bank, and much worse than you’d get from a cheap provider.
As was suggested above, you should consider getting a credit card that does not have a surcharge for foreign transactions.
Generally speaking, you should have no trouble using your cards in Sweden and Denmark. There are only two things you should be aware of. One is that debit networks are not 100% interoperable with U.S. networks. So your debit card might not work in some stores and smaller banks, but should be fine at ATMs owned by larger banks. Credit cards work everywhere.
The other is that European credit cards are Chip+PIN, while U.S. cards are Chip+Signature. This was occasionally a problem at automated ticket kiosks in railroad stations, since the kiosk would not take the credit card without a PIN. To buy a train ticket, I sometimes had to go to the ticket window and buy from the ticket agent.
Credit and debit cards are ubiquitous in Scandinavia. You should have no trouble using a Visa card. Before you travel, you could apply for a credit card that has zero foreign transactions fee. You can also take out money from an ATM, like almost anywhere else in the world. Some banks’ ATM cards refund ATM fees.
Purchases in a foreign currency are no problem with a major credit/debit card (i.e. Visa). Purchases will appear in USD on your statement, possibly with a small foreign transaction fee (typically 3%).
As a Bank of America card holder, you can use ATMs from banks that are part of the Global ATM Alliance without paying a non-BofA ATM fee (but still the 3% Foreign Transaction Fee (FTF)).
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