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*Note: This article has been updated
Post Office travel money rates compared with the best and the worst rates available on Compare Holiday Money.
I think it’s fair to say that the Post Office has more places to exchange your pound sterling for foreign currency than just about anywhere else. We have no less than 10,475 locations for the Post Office on our click and collect section; what a job that was!
But how do the PO exchange rates stack up against the opposition?
Firstly, there are 3 options for converting some of your salary into foreign cash with the Post Office and this is quite standard for suppliers with locations or branches:
Order online for home delivery
This will usually give you the best rate but of course you do have to wait for it to be delivered.
Order online for collection
You should get the same rate but you will still need to wait usually around 24 hours for popular currencies before you collect and sometimes longer for less popular ones.
Just walk in and buy it
Great, no waiting and no chance of it getting lost by Royal Mail and no delivery charges! But, the chances are you will get a much worse rate and, if it’s not euros or US dollars you want they may not have it in stock.
Remember the motto: Order online to get the online rate.
For the purpose of this article we are looking at the online rates for all the comparisons and all taken at the same time on the same day. We chose £750 of the 5 most popular currencies over the last 7 days.
Euros
Best rate: Whitehall FX 1.1140
Worst Rate: Barclays Bank 1.0595
Post Office rate: 1.0900
For £750 you would get €18 more with Whitehall FX than the Post Office but a staggering €41 more than Barclays.
US dollars
Best rate: Whitehall FX 1.2690 gets you $951
Worst Rate: Barclays 1.2232 = $917
Post Office rate: 1.2425 = $931 20 bucks less than the best
Aussie dollars
Best rate: NM Money 1.7426 = A$1306
Worst Rate: Barclays 1.6616 = A$1246
Post Office rate: 1.7050 = A$1280
Post Office 4th from bottom
Czech koruna
Best rate: Travel FX 28.6538 = Kč21,490
Worst Rate: RBS 26.3300 = Kč19,747
Post Office rate: 27.1305 = Kč20.347
Polish Zloty
Best rate: Travel FX 4.7400 = zł3555
Worst Rate: NatWest 4.3950 = zł3296
Post Office rate: 4.5406 = zł3405
So as we can see the Post Office rates are not the best and the walk-in rates would be even worse. The high street banks sit consistently at the bottom of our tables for exchange rates but the Post Office in most cases sit just above them. However, they were the 9th most visited FX supplier on our website last year so lots of you still trust the brand and of course, who hasn’t got one on their doorstep?
Don’t forget the motto though ………………….!
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