Soldo Pricing Explained: How FX Fees, Plan Costs, and ATM Charges Impact Business Travel Spending in 2026

[London, July 31, 2026] — A 1.5 percent foreign exchange markup on every international transaction. Three subscription tiers that change software features but not card fees. ATM withdrawals that stack Soldo's conversion charge on top of operator surcharges. For the thousands of business travelers carrying a Soldo prepaid Mastercard in 2026, these numbers determine exactly how far a corporate budget stretches once a plane lands in a foreign country.

Soldo, a London-based spend management platform, has grown into a mainstream tool for finance teams distributing prepaid cards to employees instead of relying on traditional corporate credit accounts. The model promises transparency — software costs sit separate from financial service charges — but travelers who do not understand the fee architecture before departure routinely overspend, trigger rejected transactions, or face expense report discrepancies that take weeks to resolve.

What Soldo Is and How Its Prepaid Model Works

Soldo operates as a spend management platform built around prepaid Mastercard cards linked to company-funded wallets. Finance teams load money into a central Soldo account, then issue physical or virtual cards to individual employees with spending rules attached to each one. For the traveler, this replaces the familiar cycle of charging expenses to a personal credit card and submitting receipts for reimbursement weeks later.

Because every Soldo card is prepaid, overspending is structurally impossible — a card will decline once its loaded balance runs out. That safety net appeals to companies worried about unauthorized spending, but it also means travelers must monitor their wallet balance closely during multi-day trips, especially when hotel pre-authorizations temporarily lock portions of available funds.

Unlike a traditional corporate credit card that bundles most costs into an annual fee and applies opaque foreign exchange markups, Soldo separates its pricing into two layers. The company pays a recurring subscription for access to the software platform. A separate schedule of financial fees then applies to card usage, including any foreign exchange markup at the point of sale. For the traveler, the software subscription is not a personal concern — but the FX and ATM terms directly shape how much purchasing power a card holds in another country.

Soldo Plans: Standard, Plus, and Unlimited Explained

Soldo groups its commercial offering into three primary plans: Standard, Plus, and Unlimited. Each tier targets a different scale of business operations and complexity.

Standard serves as the entry-level option for smaller teams that want centralized control and basic expense tools. Employees on this plan typically receive cards with monthly spending limits and standard receipt capture functionality.

Plus adds deeper reporting capabilities, automation features, multi-level approval workflows, and richer analytics. Growing companies with expanding travel programs tend to gravitate toward this tier.

Unlimited caters to larger enterprise customers requiring custom controls, third-party integrations, and dedicated support resources.

Plan	Target Customer	Key Features
Standard	Small teams	Central control, basic expense tools, monthly limits, receipt capture
Plus	Growing companies	Advanced reporting, automation, multi-level approvals, richer analytics
Unlimited	Enterprise	Custom controls, integrations, dedicated support

The critical detail for travelers is that these plans primarily affect what users can do within the software platform — not how much each foreign transaction costs at the register. An employee on a Standard plan and a colleague on Plus will typically face the same underlying foreign exchange fee when paying in a currency different from the card's base currency. The difference shows up in smaller ways: whether the mobile app allows receipt upload and transaction coding from a taxi, or whether finance teams can run multi-dimensional spend reports after a trade show delegation returns.

Before major travel pushes — such as sending a sales team to an exhibition in Dubai or New York — finance departments typically review the Soldo pricing page and confirm with the sales team that the current plan covers the required number of cards and active users. From the traveler's perspective, this planning ensures the card functions reliably abroad and carries sufficient loaded budget, rather than influencing day-to-day costs at the point of sale.

Foreign Exchange Fees: The 1.5% Markup That Matters Most

For international travel, the single most consequential element of Soldo pricing is the foreign exchange fee applied to card transactions. Soldo states in its expense management and support materials that domestic card purchases carry no transaction fees. Foreign transactions, however, incur a fixed FX fee on top of the Mastercard exchange rate.

In recent disclosures for European customers, this FX markup has been set at approximately 1.5 percent of the transaction value, applied whenever a payment is made in a currency different from the card's base currency.

Consider a practical scenario: a Soldo card denominated in euros, used during a trip from Milan to New York. A client dinner costs 100 US dollars. Mastercard converts that amount to euros at its own rate on the processing day. If the interbank conversion results in 92 euros, Soldo's 1.5 percent FX fee adds roughly 1.38 euros. The final cost appearing in Soldo totals approximately 93.38 euros.

On a single meal, that difference is modest. Across a full week of hotel bills, ride-hailing, restaurant charges, and incidental spending, those percentage points accumulate into a noticeable line item for the company's finance team.

The same principle applies to travel from the United Kingdom to the eurozone, or to countries such as Switzerland or Denmark. A 200 euro hotel stay charged to a pound-denominated Soldo card would first be converted by Mastercard to pounds, then increased by the FX markup percentage.

Soldo highlights that this fee is fixed rather than dynamic, giving finance teams and travelers a clear sense of the approximate premium relative to a mid-market rate. Some traditional business credit cards apply multiple fee layers that are harder to trace.

One important exception: if a card is used abroad but the transaction is processed in the same currency as the card, no FX fee applies. A euro-denominated Soldo card used in Spain, France, or Germany for everyday spending behaves like a domestic card. A 4 euro coffee or a 30 euro train ticket hits the wallet at face value with no foreign exchange surcharge from Soldo.

ATM Withdrawals and Cash Costs Abroad

While many business travelers can operate almost entirely through contactless and chip payments, certain destinations and situations still demand cash. A taxi in a smaller Italian town may prefer notes. A guide in rural Morocco may expect a cash tip. A local market vendor may not have a functioning card terminal.

When a Soldo card reaches an ATM, a different fee structure activates compared with ordinary point-of-sale purchases.

Soldo's fee summaries distinguish between point-of-sale transactions and ATM withdrawals. For business accounts in the euro area, the currency exchange fee for ATM use is described as Mastercard's rate plus the same fixed FX percentage applied to purchases. In addition, the ATM operator itself may charge a separate fee — either a flat amount or a percentage — over which Soldo has no control.

A traveler withdrawing the equivalent of 100 euros in local currency might pay Soldo's FX markup on the conversion plus, for example, a 3 euro surcharge demanded by the foreign ATM. This double layer makes cash withdrawals meaningfully more expensive than card payments for the same nominal amount.

Because of this compounding cost, many finance teams actively encourage travelers to minimize ATM use and rely on card payments wherever contactless and chip terminals are available. A project manager visiting Warsaw for a site inspection, for instance, might be advised to pay for metro cards, hotel accommodation, and meals directly with the Soldo card, withdrawing cash only for venues that categorically refuse cards.

Why This Matters for Travelers and Finance Teams

For the traveler, Soldo's fee structure creates a clear incentive: pay by card whenever possible, in the card's base currency when feasible, and avoid ATMs unless absolutely necessary. A euro-denominated card used across the eurozone incurs zero FX fees. The same card used in London, New York, or Tokyo picks up a 1.5 percent markup on every transaction — manageable on small purchases, significant across a week of business travel.

From a logistical standpoint, the prepaid nature of Soldo cards introduces a planning obligation that traditional credit cards do not. A traveler must confirm that sufficient funds are loaded before departure, accounting for hotel pre-authorizations that can temporarily lock a portion of the available balance. A card declined at a foreign hotel front desk because the wallet was underfunded creates a scenario that no amount of fee transparency can resolve.

Finance teams, meanwhile, benefit from the fixed FX markup because it makes travel budgets predictable. A 1.5 percent surcharge applied uniformly across all foreign transactions can be modeled in advance, unlike the variable and often undisclosed markups applied by some legacy corporate card programs. The trade-off is that companies must actively manage wallet loads and card limits to ensure travelers are not stranded without available funds mid-trip.

Before any international departure, travelers should verify three things with their finance department: the card's base currency, the loaded wallet balance, and any restrictions on ATM withdrawals. These three data points determine whether a trip proceeds smoothly or generates an expense report full of exceptions.

Understanding your card's fee architecture before departure is the difference between closing deals and decoding charges.

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