Earning in dollars is half the story — the other half is spending without watching fees nibble every transaction. Here’s how spending abroad with the Rakupay card works, and how to keep more of your balance while you travel.
How real-time conversion works
When you tap the card in another currency, the conversion happens at the moment of checkout, drawn from your USD or crypto balance at a transparent rate — no hidden FX spread layered on top. You see what you spent and what it cost to convert, with nothing buried in the exchange rate.
The fee traps to avoid
- “Pay in your home currency?” Always choose the local currency at a terminal or ATM. Saying yes to your home currency triggers dynamic currency conversion — a merchant-side markup that’s often 3–7%.
- ATM operator fees. The machine’s owner may add a flat fee regardless of your card. Withdraw larger amounts less often to dilute it.
- Tourist-area kiosks. Standalone “currency exchange” ATMs offer the worst rates — use bank-operated machines.
Spend smart, day to day
- Add the card to Apple Pay / Google Pay for contactless payments and an extra layer of security.
- Hold USD, spend USD. If you earned dollars, spending from your dollar balance avoids an extra conversion. Convert deliberately, not by accident — see our stablecoin guide.
- Freeze instantly if it goes missing. A card you can freeze and unfreeze in a tap turns a lost-card panic into a minor inconvenience.
Why one balance, one card helps
Juggling a local account, a travel card, and a crypto wallet means three sets of fees and three things to reconcile. Spending directly from the same balance you get paid into — in 180+ countries — keeps the math simple: what you earned is what you spend, minus a rate you can actually see.
