Foreign Transaction Fee
- Thread starter Tommyboy
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Visa and Mastercard usually charge 1%. Your issuing bank may charge as much as 1%-3% on top of that. I asked specifically about a card I got recently, and did get one with 1% from Visa and 0% from the bank. If you ask around, you can find a similar deal, but probably no better than 1% because Visa and Mastercard themselves charge that.
Your Visa-Check cards will typically operate the same way, as they have a Visa logo, though typically the check cards will only charge the 1% from Visa but nothing more as it is a debt transaction. Again, check with your issuing bank.
I don't know about American Express or the Discover card.
Your Visa-Check cards will typically operate the same way, as they have a Visa logo, though typically the check cards will only charge the 1% from Visa but nothing more as it is a debt transaction. Again, check with your issuing bank.
I don't know about American Express or the Discover card.
Visa and Mastercard Intl (the owners of the brands respectively) stopped these fees to their member banks back in April/May of 2005. Of course some banks decided to continue doing it as it is a big revenue stream for them. They will still tell you that they get charged it, which is a lie. If you complain, they take off that transaction fee. It can be as high as 3% on certain cards. It is another way to rip off their good customers to pay from all the bad risk customers they continue to sign up.
miguelaqui said:
What cards don't charge a foreign-exchange fee? The lowest I've seen is 1%.
Bear in mind, that the exchange rate that one usually gets in a foreign currency transaction is usually pretty good. In my experience even with the foreign-exchange fee one usually comes out better than one would with a traveller's cheque or cash foreign exchange transaction.
My bank claims that there are no transaction fees for a foreign-currency *debit* transaction using my cheque card, but there are fees if run as a credit card.
CDH.
My Capital One does not.....my MBNA did not either. They might have lied to me or given thier own special exchange rate, but there was no foreign transaction fee, like my CHASE has.CDH said:
miguelaqui said:
This is interesting. The most recent Conde Nast Traveller magazine listed Capital One as 1% - among the lowest in the industry, but not 0.
It is possible that the article was wrong.
It is also possible (likely even?) that they built the 1% into the foreign-exchange rate, rather than breaking out the fee. I believe many financial institutions still do this (though I could be wrong).
CDH.
Whoops! Perhaps I'm wrong!
I went back to the magazine and it lists no additional fees for Capital One, though perhaps they still mean 1% passed on from Visa. MBNA is listed as 3% except those cobranded with Fidelity, Merrill Lynch and Charles Scwab.
I have a lot of international travel coming up, so this may be worth looking into!
CDH.
I went back to the magazine and it lists no additional fees for Capital One, though perhaps they still mean 1% passed on from Visa. MBNA is listed as 3% except those cobranded with Fidelity, Merrill Lynch and Charles Scwab.
I have a lot of international travel coming up, so this may be worth looking into!
CDH.
It is possible....I used my MBNA in Europe and the only additional fees were for the ATM usage.CDH said:
