One of Apple Card's best benefits is no foreign transaction fees

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Whenever you are traveling abroad, it's pretty common to want to use a credit card over a debit card for all of your spending. Using a credit card has obvious security perks like protecting your bank account from being drained if someone was to steal or gain access to your card information, providing certain types of insurance like travel, rental car, and accident insurance, and having access to concierge and emergency travel services.

One of the worst things about using a credit card abroad is, after enjoying an incredible trip, coming back to find a credit card statement filled with not just your purchases, but a foreign transaction fee for each and every time you swiped your card. The foreign transaction fee is one of the most diabolical fees that credit card companies charge for no other reason than that they can. Swiping your card abroad doesn't cost credit card companies any more than if you swiped it at home, but it is a fee that they've been able to get away with for decades.

However, there are a number of credit cards that, as consumers became more aware of the lack of necessity of this fee, have thankfully removed it. Apple isn't bothering with this fee at all and is coming right out of the gate with no foreign transaction fees for Apple Card. This is a great move and is ultimately the right thing to do for consumers. As Apple Pay makes its way to more countries, Apple Card will become even more enticing as a card to use anywhere since it will earn cardholders 2% on all purchases, not to mention those rewards will be available the day after the transaction posts with Daily Cash.

However, this is the only benefit that Apple Card has concerning travel so far. It is currently lacking any of the additional benefits that are found on plenty of other travel credit cards. If you're looking for things like concierge services, emergency services, or insurances, you're going to have to look elsewhere for now. These are of course all things that could be added eventually, but Apple is omitting these at least at card launch.

Joe Wituschek
Contributor

Joe Wituschek is a Contributor at iMore. With over ten years in the technology industry, one of them being at Apple, Joe now covers the company for the website. In addition to covering breaking news, Joe also writes editorials and reviews for a range of products. He fell in love with Apple products when he got an iPod nano for Christmas almost twenty years ago. Despite being considered a "heavy" user, he has always preferred the consumer-focused products like the MacBook Air, iPad mini, and iPhone 13 mini. He will fight to the death to keep a mini iPhone in the lineup. In his free time, Joe enjoys video games, movies, photography, running, and basically everything outdoors.