Credit Card charges scrapped
The first rule of elitist intercontinental travel is "never own a travel wallet". I know. Unfortunately I saw this one and it had a Swedish flag on it and two Ä's and it was practical. It has slots for both of my passports, a nice area to keep my Swedbank security device, a place to keep a spare credit card and the 4 public transit stored value cards I'll use on this trip as well as 5 of the currencies I'll need and of course some spare SIM cards.
I usually just shove all of this stuff into a pocket of my backpack or jam as much as I can into my wallet and it just doesn't work out that well. This will function much better.
Fjäll Räven Travel Wallet
As of this week the government has banned companies from charging card fees when someone uses a credit or debit card to make a payment. This happens through all sectors but it very common within the travel industry. It is typical to see debit card users not have a surcharge but credit card payments to incur a 1.5% – 4% fee on top of the payment that you wish to make. A typical family of four going on holiday and paying by credit card can see a significant charge on top of the price of their booking.
Airlines
Ryanair and easyJet used to charge a credit card fee of 2% and 1% respectively. Flybe used to charge 1% for bookings paid for by a credit card or PayPal, and 2.5% for those paying by American Express. easyJet scrapped its fees on 14 December and at the moment Ryanair has said it will scrap the fee. It will be intersting to see if the price of flights just increases across the board by the same percentage.
Of course it is difficult to see if a flight goes up by 2% so the prices may have a stealth increase in order to make up for the loss that some of these companies will see.
We will be keeping an eye on what the travel industry does over the coming weeks.
Main image by mroach
