International Currency Exchange

A while back I lived in the States before coming to Spain, as well as the UK, and I still do business there, which is a hassle considering all three have their own currency. Living in the Eurozone makes you realize how much of an advantage it is to have a common currency, even if the language and laws of neighbouring countries aren't the same. Financial crisis aside, the convenience of being able to wire funds to another EU nation without currency exchange rates is a huge plus.

However, since I frequently have to trade in other currencies, I keep my broker and bank website bookmarked, but I don't need a ticker for up to the minute rates, so checking once a day is usually sufficient, and for casual lookups I often just go to FreeCurrencyRates.com and use their converter, which uses ajax to give an instant conversion instead of having to click go or submit and then wait a few seconds for the page to refresh. That for me is the biggest problem with other online converters, and also most have small fonts, are fiddly to use, and seriously, why do I need to click submit.

Check out the Free Currency Rates Online Currency converter app to see the difference. No need to download anything, no software to install, in fact it's completely anonymous to lookup a conversion. I don't even see any sales pitch and that is rare. A nice touch is being able to switch language, so if I'm with a client who only speaks Spanish they can easily choose one of the other currencies based on the translation. Here's a simple example of what I mean, the US dollar is called "Dólar estadounidense" which is exactly what a Spaniard would call it since they don't say USA, they say EE.UU.