Maybe there’s a topic on this but couldn’t find it. Just wanted to make sure of something. When we top up any kind of transportation cards abroad - this is counted as a foreign transaction right? Not a withdrawal?
Is it worth creating one topic about those possible card (NYC Metro, Oyster, Civica Card) or put information in each country specifically?
Not sure there’s a need for a separate topic. Any spending you do outside the UK (on anything, be it groceries, a train ticket or public transport) is foreign card spending.
Every top-up I’ve seen is treated as a goods/services purchase, not a cash transaction. Not that it really matters, I’ve been told the ATM fees are only for ATMs not all cash transactions (Monzo, please correct if that’s wrong).
Public transport cards that can be used like cash (e.g. Octopus and Suica) generally can only be topped up with cash. I really dislike this, as they end up being the only reason you need to touch cash some places (e.g. Hong Kong, where you need to withdraw cash to load your Octopus, but not for anything else really).