Do you have travelers checks? You have currency
Within the services offered by iCambio to its clients, we have at your disposal the purchase of any currency (euros included) paying with travelers checks or travelers checks in English.
What are travelers checks
Traveller’s checks (also known as traveler’s checks) are registered and serial-numbered documents that have a face value determined in advance in any foreign currency (dollars, pounds, etc.).
They are issued by financial institutions in exchange for an advance payment for their full amount. The best-known travelers’ check issuers are American Express, Visa and MasterCard. And they are usually issued by the main international currencies: the dollar, the euro and the pound sterling.
Their holder can use them in many shops and exchange houses for the face value of the currency in which these checks are issued or also that of another currency for which they are exchanged. Only if they bear the signature of their rightful owner are they valuable, so if they are stolen or lost, they should not be paid for again.
Traditionally they have been used in Anglo-Saxon countries such as the United Kingdom or the United States as a means of payment abroad because they are safer than the ticket in the wallet. Security is achieved thanks to the fact that the check must be signed by the holder of the document in order for it to have value.
This duty to be signed makes them more secure than cash, which is not nominative but a bearer document (whoever has it can make its value effective by buying without giving explanations).
Therefore, a user with a 100 pound traveler’s check will be able to buy their equivalent value in euros at an exchange office or a commercial establishment that accepts this method of payment. In this sense, the travelers check behaves exactly as if they were cash in the same currency in which they were issued.
How do they work
This traveler’s check service is easy to understand. The user who has a traveler’s check in pounds sterling (GBP), can, upon arrival at any iCambio office, ask for euros and pay by check if the amount is exact or by completing the difference with currency pounds in tickets or with their credit card.
At iCambio we deliver the equivalent value of traveler’s checks that present them, in euros or other foreign banknotes.
They’re safe, right?
Traveler’s checks are similar for security purposes to bank checks. The financial institution that issues the check unconditionally guarantees the payment to the bearer of the check (the exchange house or the merchant that accepts them) for its nominal amount. And this even if the check was fraudulently issued, stolen or lost.
At the time of payment, the owner must sign them so that they have value, with the same signature that the issuing bank collected when delivering their travel checkbook.
Today they are a document in disuse for the benefit of other forms of payment such as the card or the same paper currency.