I’m going to highlight my personal experience in taking advantage of using bitcoin in International travel with my Bitpay Visa Debit Card to save money.
I’ve been using bitcoin for over 1 ½ years and witnessed its meteoric price rise during that time. I’ve also participated in a variety of online activities, and seen the demand for bitcoin continuing to climb, along with other crypto currency’s in general. Looking at our global economic landscape, it appears obvious to the “early risers” that bitcoin is helping to shape of the evolution of our financial landscape. To get into this trend early positions you to benefit and save money.
I find it interesting when I ask people this simple question: “Have you heard of Bitcoin?” The typical answer is Yes. Then I ask them “Do you understand how to use it?” The response is inevitably No, or I have no idea!
This indicates that the majority of our population is still in the dark on the alternative of using Bitcoin to traditional methods of banking. Briefly Bitcoin is attracting more and more people because it’s a direct person to person transaction, there is no middleman. It’s relatively quick and inexpensive as well as secure.
Chances are you already have your bitcoin wallet at an exchange, like Coinbase, blockchain.info, Coinpayment.net or others. As a side note Coinbase is in litigation with the IRS for not turning over their client base which is problematic at best.
Now for my personal experience on how I saving money using my Bitpay debit card. I live in Tucson, Arizona, which is a little over an hours drive to Nogales, Mexico. I have a friend that told me he’s doing his dental work there and saving over 40% or more on doing his dental work here, plus his dental insurance covers part of it so he’s saving a lot.
I decided to make a trip to his dentist and walked across the border, but didn’t want to carry cash. I hadn’t gone across the Mexican border before, but was a bit leery from some of the stories I’d heard. That made it perfect for me to bring my Bitpay Card.
I since done some dental work and paid over $800 in bills. However, because of the exchange rate for the dollar vs the Mexican peso, I found I was benefiting from a positive exchange rate, and was only paying about 94% of the actual bill. From the dentist standpoint they were paid in full, so I was happy and so were they.
I also like the fact that the transaction is not going through a bank, so it bypassing their snooping in my business, and the actual transaction fees are very reasonable.
Plus I can just take cash out of any ATM, especially important if I’m travelling Internationally for a good exchange rate to have spendable cash.
Now for the best part. Regardless of what country you visit, Bitpay is acknowledged in 131 countries worldwide. You’ll benefit from a higher exchange rate in each of those as well, so take your Bitpay Visa card with you. You can easily load funds onto your card from your bitcoin wallet quickly at any Internet Cafe in the country you're in. It's usually takes less than 10 minutes to do so, and then go to an ATM for cash.
To verify the country you are travelling to accepts your Bitpay card you can call their customer service number at 1-855 884-7568