UK Travel Money Market Report 2026

UK Travel Money Industry – Trends and Insights

• Consumer spending on overseas holidays has continued its post-pandemic growth, rising by around 12% to £59.8 billion in 2025. Holidays remain a priority for consumers, despite ongoing cost of living pressures. However, many consumers will continue to focus on the quality, rather than quantity, of holidays they take each year.
• Cash remains the most popular spending method among overseas UK holidaymakers with usage highest among older age groups, driven by long-established spending habits and wariness over digital solutions. Overseas travellers prefer to use cash for quick, smaller-value transactions, like public transport and gift-buying. However, card use is strongly preferred for larger-value transactions, with the added purchase protection reassuring people should something go wrong.
• The digitisation of financial services is enabling instant access to services and consumers’ expectations are shifting alongside it. For travel money providers, this means making exchanging currency as simple and efficient as possible.

This Report Looks at the Following Areas:

• Insights into the size of the travel money market and forecast for the next five years.
• Exploring how the ongoing cost of living crisis has influenced consumers’ travel choices.
• Examining the types of travel money used on travellers’ most recent trips abroad and how they arranged their travel money.
• Exploring travellers’ preferred payment methods for different purchases while abroad and the factors that influence their choice of one payment method over another.
• Understanding whether consumers are interested in a holiday budget calculator tool or allowing AI to arrange travel money for them.

Market Definitions

This report examines how people spend money abroad. The main sources of travel money are foreign currency, credit and debit cards, prepaid cards and travellers’ cheques.

Key definitions are as follows:

• Credit cards – spending on these cards overseas usually involves extra transaction fees of up to 2.99%, typically on top of the currency exchange rate set by the network payment processor, ie Visa, Mastercard and American Express. There are exceptions, eg Nationwide’s credit card offers worldwide commission-free purchases. Credit card issuers also tend to charge a fee for cash withdrawals, typically 2.5%-3% (or minimum £3). Some banks offer special travel credit cards or credit cards with extra travel perks, such as no charges on spending abroad or overseas ATM withdrawals (eg Barclaycard Rewards credit card, Halifax Clarity Credit Card). Nationwide and Aqua also don’t charge for overseas purchases. The network payment processor sets the currency exchange rate, ie Visa, Mastercard and American Express.
• Prepaid cards – are designed to be pre-loaded with cash (usually pounds, euros or US dollars) and then used in the same way as debit and credit cards (ie with a PIN) to pay for goods or withdraw cash from an ATM while abroad. The exchange rate is set at the time the card is loaded. As with travellers’cheques, a lost or stolen card can be replaced, and the balance is protected. A prepaid card is not linked to a bank account (like a debit card) and does not have a credit facility (like a credit card), meaning the cardholder can only spend the amount put on the card.
• Debit cards – most debit cards issued by the main high street banks charge a transaction fee (typically 2.79%-2.99%) on spending abroad. Some will not charge any additional fees on card spending abroad, although these tend to be cards linked to fee-paying current accounts (eg Nationwide’s FlexPlus account, TSB’s Spend & Save Plus). Debit card cash withdrawals made overseas also typically come with a transaction fee (typically around 2% or minimum £3). However, several challenger banks (including Monzo, Starling and Revolut) offer debit cards that do not charge extra for spending abroad or cash withdrawals (although there may be a daily limit imposed).
• Foreign currency – currency obtained by exchanging pounds sterling, either in the UK pre-departure (at a bank, bureau de change, or the Post Office, etc) or at a destination overseas.
• Travellers’ cheques – pre-printed, fixed-amount cheques, available in numerous denominations and currencies, such as euros, US dollars, Canadian dollars, pounds sterling and Japanese yen, which can be exchanged for local currency. They are protected against loss or theft.