FX Foreign Purchase Calculator

[nathanthomson8 (Nathan)]

Hi,

Whilst on holiday recently I had the need for a certain feature and thought that others might have come across the same need.

Whilst out having dinner in a restaurant in spain the prices where all in Euros of course and as I was going to pay the final bill for my whole family i felt myself wondering if i would have had enough currently in my monzo account to pay after the mastercard exchange rate had been applied.

TLDR: A handy calculator within the app to check if my balance would be enough for a purchase in a foreign currency.

[brenda (Brenda Wong)]

Ooh, that would be useful! Cheers for the suggestion, @nathanthomson8. It’s not as useful, but checking out the Mastercard exchange rate calculator online might be the next best bet. (One day…)

[jzw95]

Or show the account balance in the foreign currency (noting it’s approximate)? I think that would be hugely useful. A lot of discussion on that in a previous thread:

Foreign Exchange Rate and Balance When In Other Countries

I’ve recently got back from a trip to Singapore (No full emoji support in forum?) what I found time consuming when using my card and app was having to figure out in my head what my card balance was in Singapore Dollars. So my idea was that when your in a foreign country it would be useful to display the your card balance in the local currency as well show side/side the £ to $ SGD that way figuring out the value of the pound/dollar would be really easy.

[anon44204028]

Something like the one in the Luminor Bank app

[jrlagerman (Jorge)]

I use Xe.com

It’s usually bang on with the MasterCard exchange rate (like just now)

[anon44204028]

So do I, but we are talking about having a tool integrated into the Monzo app. And when travelling using browser access can be a bit slow and unreliable at times

[jrlagerman (Jorge)]

Fair, it would be useful indeed

[anon44204028]

I still like the idea of being able in your settings to set a secondary currency and then the app could display every transaction item in two currencies (one being an approximate of course)

[Anarchist (Press ‘Help’ search ‘Contact us’ or email help@monzo.com or call 0800 802 1281)]

@anon44204028

when travelling using browser access can be a bit slow and unreliable at times

There’s an XE iOS app

XE Currency by XE.com Inc.

[anon44204028]

I think there are Android and Windows ones too.

On Google Play Store search for “XE Currency”.

Another good one is “Currency Convertor Pro” by Julien Millau, which is regularly updated and now includes the new Dobra (STN) and Ouguiya (MRU) currencies.

[jrlagerman (Jorge)]

@Anarchist

There’s an XE iOS app

You just rocked my world! I just downloaded it and it works impressively well. I’d be fantastic to have such calculator (or maybe an integration) on the monzo app

[Anarchist (Press ‘Help’ search ‘Contact us’ or email help@monzo.com or call 0800 802 1281)]

@jrlagerman

I’d be fantastic to have such calculator (or maybe an integration) on the monzo app

I’m not sure I’d use it, personally. Given that whatever rate Monzo offers on the date of purchase is liable to change on presentment, I generally use Siri to get an approximate value. It’s always been close enough in my experience.

Of course, close enough for me may differ from close enough for you.

I’ve just used Siri to convert 100 Euros. It’s £88.23 - close enough for me.

[jrlagerman (Jorge)]

I guess I’d depend on the country you’re travelling to. I’m sure that if you travel to the US or the Eurozone you’ll be fine, but Siri might not be as accurate if you travel somewhere more… exotic