A credit card is convenient and less cumbersome than cash when you’re in a foreign country, but it has the potential to incur fees or cause other issues without a little know-how or pre-planning.
That’s what We3travel.com blogger Tamara Gruber discovered on a trip to Spain with her husband and then 8-year-old daughter. She had forgotten to alert her credit card issuer that she was going to be traveling internationally, Gruber says, and when she tried to purchase a SIM card in Barcelona to use her cell phone, her card was declined.
“It was a true Catch-22 situation in that we couldn’t buy the SIM card without our credit card, and we couldn’t make a call to get the charge approved without a SIM card,” she says. “I’ll never make that mistake again.”
That’s one of five mistakes international travelers commonly make, and fortunately, there’s an easy way to avoid each. Read on for helpful tips on using your credit card abroad. To explore your travel options, visit the Citi TravelSM with Booking.com portal.