Smart Solution for Pesky Foreign Currency

March 30, 2016

by: Ilse Posselt, Correspondent, Bridges for Peace

Anybody who has traveled internationally knows the dilemma. With the trip over, you find yourself waiting to board the flight home with the last foreign coins or bills still rattling around in your pockets. Exchanging the currency is not an option. So you either hunt around the airport gift shop for an overpriced trinket you did not want, or you toss the coins in a drawer back home. Thanks to TravelersBox, a revolutionary Israeli start-up, there is now a third option that allows you to redeem unused foreign coins and bills for something useful—right before boarding your flight home.

TravelersBox takes the leftover bits of cash in exchange for one of their product offerings. Simply locate one of the TravelersBox automated kiosks at a participating airport, deposit your spare currency and choose how you would like to redeem it. The options are quite attractive. Extra credit on your PayPal or Skype account, a gift card from retailers like H&M, Banana Republic or Gap, eateries like Applebees and Starbucks or a charitable donation to a worthy cause, like Greenpeace, PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals] and WWF [World Wildlife Fund].

Other leading brands that have joined the TravelersBox offering include iTunes, Groupon, Google Play, Old Navy, Domino’s Pizza and many more. Moreover, to ensure a fast, hassle-free transaction in the last moments before you take off, the service requires no pre-registration or verification process.

TravelersBox is the brainchild of three Israeli childhood friends, Dror Blumenthal, Idan Deshe and Tomer Zussman. “[Zussman] lived in New York for six years and would constantly fly back and forth [from Israel],” Blumenthal, the co-founder and chief marketing officer, told TechinAsia. “Idan and I visited him in the US a few years ago and saw he had half a million quarters, nickels, and other coins. We broke out in laughter.”

Once the laughter died down, the three friends realized that Zussman’s foreign coin collection was in no way unique but rather an issue many international travelers faced. According to TechinAsia, Zussman admitted to his dream of inventing a type of device where travelers could redeem the foreign bits of cash for something useful, after which the three friends, all of whom had previous entrepreneurial experience, got the ball rolling.

The first TravelersBox appeared in 2013 in Turkey. Over the next two years, more boxes popped up in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the Far East.

Photo Credit: www.travelersbox.com