Travel money update: from my research the 28 Degrees Latitude credit card is the best for credit and UBank seems to be the winner for best debit card.
Both are free to sign up for and it's always good to have multiple payment options overseas in case one fails you. Both have Google Pay/Apple Pay contactless payment options.
Both charge $0 fees for foreign exchange and the UBank card has $0 fees for ATM withdrawals overseas (although local ATM operators may charge their own fee).
28 Degrees uses the Mastercard Exchange Rate and UBank uses the Visa Exchange Rate with no extra fees on top.
UBank has a $2000 (AUD) daily withdrawal limit, which is up from the $1000 limit I've seen on competitors, and no monthly withdrawal limit like some cards do (Wise has a $7000 monthly limit).
So my plan is to use the credit card to pay for things like hotels, meals etc and then use the debit card for ATM withdrawals and as a backup other payments. This means I don't need to keep too much cash sitting on the debit card balance.
I've done a bunch of research and read lots of terms and conditions so hopefully this info can help someone avoid nasty fees and gotchas. The one thing to note is that the exchange rate is calculated when the payment is cleared each time you spend, so if you want to lock in an exchange rate you need to use a travel card which 'loads' foreign currency rather than a debit/credit card.
