If you wish to transfer money abroad you are faced with many choices, I hope the below will give you some help in making the right choice.
How you transfer your money to Spain really depends on what your needs are, how quickly you wish to see the funds in your account and also how much you need to transfer.
My own personal experience is that given the the collapse of Foreign Exchange companies that exist you need to be wary! I had the experience of transferring funds through a company, only to find that the money wasn't transferred. The company did put the mistake right but there was a period where I honestly thought I had lost a couple of thousand pounds.
Many pundits advocate the use of pre-paid cards, I personally have shopped around and have found that Caxton FX do take care of most of my needs, I can transfer funds using their 'Fast Pay' service which is almost instantaneous, the exchange rate is slightly less than an exchange company, but once you make adjustments for no commission or charges being made. In addition I can also recommend FC Exchange, their personal service is definitely recommended and maybe worth while if you have a larger amount to transfer and don't mind waiting for the clearance system to work.
I also make use of Caxton pre-paid card. The big security plus is that they are not linked to your bank account and are pin-protected so, unlike debit cards, give fraudsters no way of accessing your bank or personal identity details nor, should they get hold of your card, any way of running up credit at your expense.
Recent reviews of prepaid cards for use abroad by the likes of Which? and independent specialist comparison website Compare Prepaid name cards from Travelex, Caxton FX, FairFX and my Travel Cash as good value.
In general, travel money cards give you a better exchange rate than other travel money providers, on average 8% better than exchanging at airports, 4% better than travellers cheques and 5% better than a bureau de change, according to Raffick Marday at Compare Prepaid.
These cards may also come in useful if you want to book Ryan Air flights. Passengers using a credit card to buy Ryan Air tickets have to add a further £5 per person, per booking, and the airline recently started charging those paying by Visa Electron cards, which used to escape these fees. Now the only way you can avoid such charges is to use a prepaid MasterCard. Ryan Air do switch the cards you can use to complicate the procedue, however at the time of writing Caxton's Euro Card was accepted by Ryan Air.
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