I'm off to Europe soon for a few months and wish to reduce the the rip off's the banks have on you when you get money out of the ATM over there.
I will be taking Euro cash exchanged in George St Sydney.
I have found you can get a hugely better rate there than you do locally but won't take any more than a two thousand Euro that way for obvious reasons.
Last time I was in Montenegro 2 years ago I got a fantastic rate on AUD for Euro but found the rest of Europe I visited Spain, France Italy was gave crap rates I refused to exchange the last few dollars I held.
That time I used a travel card a "Multi Cash Passport Card" you can get from the Post office. I was unimpressed by it but when I look at reviews on the Commonwealth, ANZ ...
They all rate between 1-2 out of 5 with so many comments saying they wished to rate the card they used at 0 instead of the minimum 1.
Some comments said you'd be better off just using your everyday Aussie ATM card than the one they had used.
I once was silly enough to use my Aussie bank card for a short trip as a back up to the cash I took.
Thankfully didn't need to use it much because I was hit from pillar to post each time I used it.
My daughter had heard Citibank was supposed to be at he best but it seems you use a credit card from them.
Time is running out with just over 2 weeks to go so I guess this option is already too late.
Any thoughts.
Look up Canstar which is a government run financial ratings online service and has a fair bit of info on most things like insurance and banking.
I used the site to research my options for a trip to Europe and settled on a Velocity Visa multi cash card - it worked well and is easy to use. At the time Velocity was one of the two best recommendations. 
When traveling I pay a lump sum into my 28 Degrees mastercard credit card and then take cash out of ATMs wherever I happen to be. If the balance starts to get a bit low then I go into my bank app on the iPhone and transfer some more funds across to the credit card.
By prepaying into the credit card it avoids the interest charges that would otherwise start from the day you withdraw the cash.
I'm in a similar situation travelling a couple of months. I just arranged to get a Citibank plus account (and a 28 degrees card also). The 28 degrees credit card does allow you to load it with positive balance and then withdraw money, but there are fees associated with doing this. The Citibank is a debit card (you must load cash onto it and cannot go into negative balance like a credit card), but it will allow you to withdraw money from an ATM with no fees and the Visa (or MC??) exhange rate which is very good. Most other cards add about 3% to the Visa/MC base exchange rate.
So if you are just looking to get cash, then the Citibank plus is as good as you are likely to find. If you want credit, then the 28 degrees card is as good as you are likely to find. Both have zero fees and similarly excellent exchange rate. You could argue the Citibank is better as you can use it as a debit card (no fees and no credit card interest), but the problem with that is if you use this card for hotel/rental car holds, it hold your own cash rather than credit which could become a problem, so credit can be a good thing in these cases.
