Even the smartest traveller can lose their cards or have them blocked or stolen. Travellers cheques are an option but they are hard to get and use, and the fees are massive.

In this blog, we’ll go through how you can use CoinJar (to buy bitcoin) or any other bitcoin service to stay connected with your money back home. With a little know-how you can use bitcoin to access your money as cash, in any local currency, wherever you go.

Why bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a distributed payment network that allows you to transfer value instantly and globally, with low fees. For this tutorial, we’ve used CoinJar but you can apply this to any bitcoin service that offers currency conversion and a wallet.

Step 1 — Set up your CoinJar

Set up is free and instant, you can use a CoinJar to hold cash, and buy bitcoin.

Open a CoinJar

Step 2 — Deposit cash

We accept deposits via BPAY. BPAY deposits can take 1–3 business days so make sure you complete yours before you head off.

Step 3 — Access your cash

There are a few options for accessing the funds in your CoinJar abroad:

Find a local business that accepts bitcoin

Trade bitcoin for local currency using a service like Local Bitcoins

Withdraw as cash at a bitcoin ATM.

Find a bitcoin ATM

How do bitcoin ATMs work?

The ATM checks the current exchange rate for bitcoin in the local currency.

It then creates a quote, based on this exchange rate.

It displays a QR code that says how much to pay, and where to pay to.

Your CoinJar then converts your money to bitcoin for the quoted amount and sends.

That value gets transferred and converted to the local currency instantly.

To note

This is still a new technology, don’t build all your travel plans around bitcoin just yet, we recommend this as a powerful option, and a good back up in case of emergencies.

You don’t even have to buy bitcoin, you just have to have a CoinJar (or similar service) with money in the account.

Our users already use CoinJar to stay connected to their money, wherever they are. Read the about how one of our customers used CoinJar to access her Australian dollars in Japan when her cards were cancelled on a business trip.

Stuck? Get help.

Next: Learn how to use bitcoin for remittance.