If you are traveling outside your country where your currency is not accepted, then you can get the best exchange rates if you use your credit card, debit card or your ATM card. They offer you the best deals with regard to currency exchange.
Although ATMs are a convenient way to obtain local currency at a reasonable exchange rate, one must be careful when using an ATM machine abroad because some international ATMs have only numbers and no alphabets on the keypad and they also do not recognize pins larger than four digits. So, it is a safer option to alter your ATM pin code to a four digit number after duly informing your local bank about it.
Another serious drawback with depending on ATM card for currency exchange is that it involves a certain amount of fees and the exact amount of fees being charged is usually not known in advance. Therefore, you need to wait for the withdrawal to be debited from your account to know the exact transaction fees charged. Moreover, the fees charged by some ATMs may be really high when both the foreign bank as well as your own bank (in your home town) levy charges individually at both ends of the transaction.
Although Citibank and some of the other banks in the US, including the Bank of America, have a tie-up with foreign banks (because of which the transaction fees are waived at the ATM counters of those banks), you will discover that Citibank charges a foreign exchange fee of 1 percent of the transaction costs in dollars in order to allow you to withdraw money from your account at a Citibank ATM counter in a foreign land. Even Visa, MasterCard and American Express charge a reasonable exchange rate that is applicable to all the transactions you make abroad using these cards. The only exception in this regard is the Capital One Financial card, which is very traveler-friendly, and charges no additional surcharge, not even the minimum of 1 percent that is usually charged by Visa or MasterCard.