One card, many currencies: the lastminute.com Multi-Currency Travel Card

Different currencies, fluctuating exchange rates and costly foreign currency fees—exchanging currency is an expensive and time-consuming pain point for travelers. And so lastminute.com wanted to introduce a card that travelers can load with different currencies before leaving home to avoid currency conversion fees. For added convenience, the card had to be accessible via a mobile app.

We developed for lastminute.com the Multi-Currency Travel Card, a prepaid Visa card where customers can transfer the various currencies needed for their travels. Each currency is assigned to a separate digital-money wallet on the card. This enables users of the lastminute.com Visa card to pay in local currency at millions of acceptance points worldwide and withdraw cash at ATMs like a conventional credit or debit card.

If a wallet no longer has sufficient credit in one currency to make a payment, the remaining amount is automatically debited from a wallet in another currency.

Customers activate and top up the card using the mobile app that Wirecard developed and tailored to the specifications of lastminute.com. The integrated Multi-Currency Dashboard allows users to manage their expenses, view their transaction history, make wallet-to-wallet transfers and even block their cards in case of loss or theft.

The lastminute.com Visa card offers travelers numerous benefits: They can load their card with pound sterling, U.S. dollars and euros, enabling them to make payments or withdraw cash anywhere in the world. Travelers avoid currency conversion fees at the point of sale and profit from more competitive exchange rates.

Unlike classic credit cards, there are no dynamic currency conversion (DCC) fees for transfers, exchanges or purchases. Moreover, the cards are much safer than cash or traveler’s checks because they can be deactivated in no time if lost or stolen.

Sergio Signoretti, Chief Financial Officer at lastminute.com says, “We are delighted to offer this modern and convenient payment solution backed by our trusted partners Wirecard and Visa, which goes a great way to enriching the lives of travelers. We want the card to become the preferential payment method for our 10 million monthly website users in order to save money when traveling.”