Quote:
Originally Posted by lee_man_sg
used my ATM to withdraw and got 13700 IDR per USD.
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I pointed it out many times in this Board, but most people reacted like just rejecting the idea
per se: they
want to use money exchangers (or maybe they don't want to leave trace on their bank accounts?).
Using ATM to withdraw cash money (with an international
debit card,
NOT credit card, for example with the Maestro or Cirrus logo on it, in other words: the same debit card you use regularly in your home country) most of the times and in most countries is by far
the most convenient and safest way to get cash overseas.
With a Maestro card (Maestro is the Mastercard name for debit cards), one pays the following fees:
- about 3 SGD fixed fee, for any amount withdrawn
- about DELTA=+1.25% fee, applied on the international inter-bank exchange rate of the day (i.e., the one you see on XE or Yahoo).
The above fees are the same, wherever you are out of your country, could be Bolivia, Colombia, USA, Uganda, France, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, or Batam. Anywhere. One may certainly find a debit card which is more convenient, but the advantage of Maestro is that it is widespread and accepted even in the most remote places of the world.
Please note: do not confuse the above with using a CREDIT card to withdraw cash. In that case, you are advancing cash, like borrowing from MAstercard, and the DELTA becomes +4%. Be careful when you insert your card in the ATM to select the appropriate function ("savings").
If you exchange your home currency to local currency in a BANK (also SGD to IDR), most times you will pay DELTA more than +2%.
If you dare to exchange in a booth at the airports, the DELTA could be +15% or +20%. Nearly a robbery.
If you go to a small exchange booth in Batam, the standard rate written on the wall is most commonly much more than +2%.
The point is that in Batam one can negotiate (bargain, a word we hear often in this Board) a better rate if he's a returning customer, or has some significant amount of new large notes to change. THEN, it is possible to get much more convenient rates than on the ATM (last time I got DELTA +0.4% on 500 USD in my usual booth on Jl. Bonjol, which is really good). However, one needs to spend some time to ask around for the best rate.