One of the biggest worries of just about any student going overseas is handling funds. The very first payment will be the university fees when you wish to study internationally, then ongoing costs and travel and accommodation. You could only carry 3000 US Dollars’ worth of cash as a traveller while you are flying from India to the foreign country. The university fees can be paid using the wire transfer route but there is one more efficient way of carrying money abroad. We will discuss that in a short while.

A person can execute forex transactions within a threshold point of 250,000 US Dollars in a financial year via the LRS which is called the Liberalised Remittance Scheme. It is apparent in the development of students that they'll have to spend a great deal of cash as college costs.

So, since you do not bring further foreign currency as cash than the 3000 US Dollars cap, most people opt to carry out a wire transfer to fund for academic expenses. In many of these cases, students decide to carry out wire transfers because of the constraints set on the payment of fees by educational institutions.

School fees may only be payable by wire transfer method, relying on the college, or others would also accept forex cards, much like debit card. You can buy forex card and make your payments.  Before you decide to make up your mind and make the payments, it's indeed wise to contact the college official. After you have confirmed it with the official, you would know if you could pay the tuition fees via forex cards or not. In addition, forex cards can hold significant sums of capital, sufficient to finance your expenditures and pay your tuition fee.

Better forex rates are by far the most significant thing that puts forex cards ahead than getting currency notes. For this reason, forex cards exclusively for students are a decent option. Students can avail exclusive cashbacks/discounts from online forex and remittance platforms.

They have a set quantity of money in them until funds are inserted into a travel card, the rate of which is not prone to foreign exchange market volatility. It is like the money in your pocket that you hold, much easier and quicker to navigate.

So, while living overseas, using a forex card would be considered a better alternative than holding cash. Many nations around the globe allow payments that are cashless.  Joining the tech transformation and keeping in line with the trends seems to be the wise move.

Advantages of Forex cards over Cash for students going overseas

There are major advantages of forex cards over cash for students who are going to study in a foreign university. It is important to analyse the various forex cards available and choose the one of your choice before you are heading off. You have a couple of options available with you: Single currency forex card or multi-currency card. If you think the multi currency forex card makes much more sense in your head, you must go with that.       

Here are the advantages: 

1.       Better exchange rates: You ultimately get great foreign exchange rates when you load currency in your forex card than purchasing foreign currency notes. The fact that the authorized banks and other forex vendors have limited supply of forex cards, will convince you to buy currency notes rather than forex cards because they want to keep the higher profit margin.

 You do not need to worry about the currency rates or from markets falling as you have already loaded your currency at a certain rate.

2.       More safety: The forex cards are chip and pin secured just like debit/credit cards. It is handy to hold currency on a forex card as it is protected from getting stolen and is also easy to handle just like debit/credit cards. If you can pay with a forex card, you wouldn't have to keep a lot of cash in your pockets. Times are changing and developed countries are going completely cashless.

3.       More benefits: Forex cards are exempt from overseas transaction costs at a lot of places and also offer ATM withdrawals occasionally with zero charges levied upon it.th Because the travel card holds the currency, while you are paying up for your fees or purchasing anything, there are zero exchange associated costs.

 A lot of the online forex & remittance platforms do not charge you on reloading/unloading a forex card which is simply great. You also get a free insurance cover on your forex card in case a mishap happens.

4. Multiple currencies in one card: A lot of online forex platforms allow you to load as many as 15 currencies in a multi currency card. If you think you will be travelling to different countries, this saves you a lot of hassle that you do not have to carry different currencies.

Final Verdict

For a student abroad, we’d advise to use a forex card more than cash when he/she is paying for things. Forex cards have many benefits: Better exchange rates, More safety, Free of a lot of charges. It’s great to carry some cash as well as there will be odd places that might not accept a forex card but that depends on the place where you are living. In developed countries like the US, Canada, Australia and European countries, the colleges/shops would prefer if you could make the payments to them via card rather than giving cash.