For a fortnight in Europe, the USA or Thailand, the Post Office Travel Money Card is a reasonable prepaid option. For long-term travel in Southeast Asia, Wise is the better fit. The Post Office card holds 22 currencies, but the only Southeast Asian ones are Thai baht and Singapore dollars. Spend in Vietnamese dong, Malaysian ringgit or Indonesian rupiah and it adds a 3% cross-border fee. It also charges its own fee on every cash withdrawal, where Wise gives you £250 a month free.
The Post Office Travel Money Card is the prepaid card most UK families already know about, because you can pick one up on the high street before a holiday. Wise is the account we have used across Southeast Asia since October 2025. Both are e-money products, both let you load pounds and hold foreign currencies, and both are free of the foreign transaction fees a high-street debit card charges.
On paper they look similar. In Southeast Asia they are not, and the reason is one line in the Post Office's currency list.
This comparison is built from the Post Office Travel Money Card's published terms (the May 2025 version) and card page, and Wise's UK fee pages, all checked on 23 September 2026.
The Short Version
The Currency List Is the Whole Story
The Post Office card holds up to 22 currencies at once. They are euro, US dollar, Australian dollar, UAE dirham, Canadian dollar, Swiss franc, Chinese yuan, Czech koruna, Danish krone, pound sterling, Hong Kong dollar, Hungarian forint, Japanese yen, Norwegian krone, New Zealand dollar, Polish zloty, Saudi riyal, Swedish krona, Singapore dollar, Thai baht, Turkish lira and South African rand.
For a two-week holiday to Spain, Florida or Phuket, that list covers you. For a family moving through Southeast Asia it leaves out most of the region: no Vietnamese dong, no Malaysian ringgit, no Indonesian rupiah, no Philippine peso, no Lao kip.
What happens when you pay in one of those is set out in section 9 and section 11 of the terms. The payment comes out of your pounds sterling wallet at the day's Post Office rate, and a 3% cross-border fee is added on top. On a month's food shopping in Vietnam, that 3% is exactly the kind of charge the card is supposed to save you from.
Wise has no equivalent list to check. Pay in dong, ringgit or rupiah and Wise converts from whichever currency you hold at the mid-market rate, with its conversion fee shown before you commit. When we left Malaysia for Cambodia we converted our leftover ringgit into US dollars inside the app for a few pence. That is the everyday reality of moving countries every four to six weeks, and it is where a 22-currency card starts to pinch.
Thailand and Cambodia: Where the Post Office Card Does Work
It would be unfair to stop there. The two Southeast Asian countries most families start with are the two where the Post Office card is usable.
Thailand. Thai baht is on the card, so spending from a baht balance costs nothing extra. Cash is where it falls down. The Post Office charges 80 THB per ATM withdrawal, and that sits on top of the 250 THB every Thai ATM charged us on our trips. That is 330 THB each time you take cash out. With Wise you still pay the ATM's 250 THB, but Wise's own charge is nothing until you pass £250 in a month. We cover the Thai ATM fee in detail in how to avoid ATM fees in Southeast Asia.
Cambodia. Cambodia runs on US dollars, ATMs dispense dollars, and the Post Office card holds dollars, so there is no cross-border fee. The ATM fee applies again, 2.50 USD per withdrawal from the Post Office, and Cambodian ATMs already charge $5 to $8 on top of that, as we found in our month in Cambodia. Paying $7.50 to $10.50 every time you take cash out adds up quickly for a family.
Exchange Rates: Where the Cost Is Hidden
The Post Office does not charge a fee to load a foreign currency, and it does not charge when you spend a currency you already hold. That is true, and it is why the card feels free. The cost is in the exchange rate the Post Office sets when you load it, which is its own rate rather than the mid-market rate. If you load pounds rather than a foreign currency, the terms add a 1.5% commission, with a minimum of £3 and a maximum of £50.
Moving money between wallets on the card uses a separate set of "Currency Swap Exchange Rates", which the terms say may differ from the rate you got when you loaded. So converting leftover baht into dollars as you cross into Cambodia has its own cost.
Wise works the other way round. The rate is the mid-market rate, the one you can check on Google, and the fee is shown separately before you confirm. It varies by currency pair, so we will not quote a single percentage that could be out of date by the time you read this. The point is that you can see it.
What Wise Does That the Post Office Card Cannot
The biggest difference has nothing to do with spending. The Post Office card is a spending card. Wise is also an account that sends money to bank accounts abroad.
For us that has been worth more than anything the card does. Paying guesthouses and landlords directly, by bank transfer in their own currency, is how we saved around £500 on accommodation, and one booking alone saved over £200 on a month's rent. We have paid deposits into Vietnamese, Thai and Cambodian bank accounts this way. A prepaid card cannot do that. We explain how that works in how to pay a landlord abroad from a UK account.
Wise also scans QR codes in several Southeast Asian countries, including Cambodia's KHQR and Malaysia's DuitNow, which we cover in can you pay by QR code with Wise.
Is Your Money Protected?
Neither card is a bank account, and neither is covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
The Post Office card is issued by First Rate Exchange Services Ltd, an authorised e-money institution (FCA register number 900412). Its terms say funds are held with an authorised bank under a trust arrangement and are protected from other creditors if First Rate Exchange Services becomes insolvent, and that the FSCS does not apply.
Wise works the same way: customer money is safeguarded, held separately from Wise's own funds. We go through what that does and does not protect in is Wise safe. For both, the sensible approach is the same one we use: treat the card as a working balance for the trip, not a place to keep savings.
When the Post Office Card Makes Sense
There is a fair case for it:
- A short holiday to a country on the list. Load euros or dollars before you go and spend them. The fees that hurt long-term travellers barely register over a fortnight.
- You want a card completely separate from your bank. A prepaid card with a fixed balance limits what you can lose if it is skimmed. That is a genuine reason some families prefer it.
- You want to buy in person. You can pick one up in a Post Office branch, which suits some people better than an app.
Our Verdict
For long-term travel in Southeast Asia, Wise is the better fit, and it is not close. The Post Office card only covers Thailand and Singapore in the region, charges on every ATM withdrawal, and cannot pay a landlord. Wise covers the whole region at the mid-market rate, gives you £250 a month of free ATM withdrawals, and doubles as the transfer account that has saved us the most money.
For cash, we still use Starling as our main card, because it has no monthly ATM cap at all. We set out how the three fit together in our Starling vs Wise vs Revolut verdict, and the Wise account on its own in our Wise card review.
Fees and currency lists change. Post Office figures are from its Travel Money Card terms dated May 2025 and its card page, and Wise figures from its UK card fees page, all checked on 23 September 2026. Check both before you rely on them.
