Quote:
Originally Posted by Rastamouse
First question; when it comes to traveling from the UK, is it worth setting up a Brazilian bank account? Or should I simply be OK withdrawing money at the ATM? My bank NatWest will apply the standard charges if I use my Visa card abroad but I was wondering if it would be advisable to do anything different?
Even if you tried, you wouldn't be able to open a bank account as a tourist since you don't have a RNE.
Isn't worth it anyways because like Lemuresco already stated because there is quite some bureaucracy involved and they also like to charge you for everything. Plus you would need to do a bank wire or something like that to fund your Brazilian account, which would surely cost you more in fees than you'd be charged by using your UK card at the ATM.
I still use my German credit cards over here and the withdrawal limit for a single cash withdrawal at the ATM at Bradesco is 800R$, Banco do Brasil & HSBC allow you to withdraw up to 1.000R$. But BdB & HSBC also have a 1.000R$ daily limit while Bradesco allows me several withdrawals (I acn withdraw up to 1.000EUR, roughly 3.000R$ there per day, just have to split it over several consecutive withdrawals and the 1.000EUR amount is a limit set by the card issuing bank, so might be higher using a different card).
Either way you should have no problem withdrawing cash at ATMs using your UK card. If you use Neteller, their credit card works fine, too.
Other banks like ITAU didn't accept my card though, but HSBC, BdB & Bradesco are found pretty much everywhere.
Can't give much advice on mobile phones though, barely use mine. Bought a prepaid card by TIM months ago, in Florianopolis (or balneario Camboriu fwiw) I didn't have much problems with them, but some of my local friends had (but it's not really different with any other provider).
But at least it was always easy to use, just buy some credit and once your credit runs down, you can either re-up online using a credit card or go to one of their shops to re-up. You can also check your remaining credit on your cell, iirc it was something like "call" *222 and you instantly receive a msg about your remaining credit.