Credit card currency exchange rates

[braumeister]

In the last few weeks I have made two online purchases in the UK on two different credit cards. Nothing substantial, both were in the neighborhood of £100 or so.

The one on my Chase Sapphire card was at roughly 0.1% over the midmarket exchange rate for that day (according to XE.com).

The one on my Apple Card was at about 0.9% over that rate.

This is really trivial; we're only talking about a few bucks, but I was surprised to see so much difference.

I think I will pay more attention to this issue going forward when I travel.

 

[MichaelB]

0.9% is a big difference. Do the T&Cs make clear what rate is used?

 

[braumeister]

0.9% is a big difference. Do the T&Cs make clear what rate is used?

Haven't looked yet, but I will.

Edit: I looked it up, and it appears to be simply the difference between how Visa (the Chase card) and MasterCard (the Apple Card) calculate conversions.

 

[audreyh1]

All VISA cards use the same exchange rate on a given day. This rate I believe is determined by the range (top end of the range?) on the previous day. I guess that’s where VISA makes a bit off the spread. You can looking up for any given date here: https://usa.visa.com/support/consumer/travel-support/exchange-rate-calculator.html
OK based on the small print under results looks like they’ve changed this a bit.

Be sure to enter the date of the transaction plus the bank fee - 0% for no FTF cards.

Mastercard has a slightly different system and I don’t remember the details. The Apple Card is a Mastercard. Here is the Mastercard calculator: https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/personal/get-support/convert-currency.html

On my recent trip I was seeing around 1.06 EUR/USD on my purchases which seemed reasonable. About half my CC statements listed the amount in euros as well as USD.

Also smaller transaction amounts can have larger rounding errors.

 

[Surewhitey]

We used to live in Mexico and I recall that our Visa used the rate of the day before. I know our ATM cards did the same...

 

[2017ish]

Yep. The visa cards, which is what we almost solely use, seem to be identical. (BoA and Chase Sapphire Reserve).

 

[brett]

We (in Canada) have two cards that are no fee FX cards.

I check both from time to time against the Visa rate and the MC rate. In the recent past (this past March) both we typically correct to the third decimal place.

 

[sengsational]

I compared the rates between cards when I got back from a trip a year or two ago. I think it was a Chase Sapphire vs Elan (Fidelity). I noticed systemic disadvantage on the Fidelity card, but it was under 1%, if I'm remembering accurately. And at the time the Fidelity card also had a 1% FTF (policy changed recently to 0%). I decided, even before the exercise was it's not worth worrying about, but questions like this still attract my attention and results seem interesting.

 

[OldConch]

In the last few weeks I have made two online purchases in the UK on two different credit cards. Nothing substantial, both were in the neighborhood of £100 or so.

The one on my Chase Sapphire card was at roughly 0.1% over the midmarket exchange rate for that day (according to XE.com).

The one on my Apple Card was at about 0.9% over that rate.

This is really trivial; we're only talking about a few bucks, but I was surprised to see so much difference.

I think I will pay more attention to this issue going forward when I travel.

Does not compute for me, time better spent looking for cheap flights.

 

[sengsational]

^ I have a spreadsheet "WhichCardToUse.xls" where I "waste" enormous amounts of time. And somehow still apply adequate time shopping for travel. I figure if I'm tinkering with the fraction of cent discounts, kickbacks and fees, you don't want to leave anything out of the analysis.