There Are 14 Responses So Far. »

1. 

   Comment by Phil on 6 January 2008:

   Wow, I didn’t know they did that, I haven’t traveled abroad in a while (the last time I did I didn’t use a credit card in the other country). Good to see this type of thing being fixed though.
2. 

   Comment by HenryB on 7 January 2008:

   Never noticed the fee but good riddens.
3. 

   Comment by Subs2008 on 7 January 2008:

   That is true, I got charged extra money on my CC after my last trip, but it was not much, so no big deal on that for me
4. 

   Comment by EconF1 on 7 January 2008:

   That is a good thing, as people used to lose a lot of money exchanging e-currencies when they are outside their country, no matter what for
5. 

   Comment by ravi on 7 January 2008:

   Really..!It’s a deal for the customers as by showing only Terms and Conditions does not rule out the deal. This is favour of us and we must appreciate this rule. Waiting for it’s implimentations.
6. 

   Comment by hero on 7 January 2008:

   sometimes this people in this industry just wants to make money form unsuspecting travelers to the hidden cost that they could get.
7. 

   Comment by Ettu Brute on 7 January 2008:

   I am afraid you have your facts mixed. As I understood the news, the card issuing banks have been found liable for charging their cardholders a fee for foreign transactions without properly disclosing the fee to the cardholder. However, this practice is not dynamic currency conversion (DCC), which is the process whereby a merchant offers its foreign customer the choice to pay in the customer’s home currency based upon a real-time conversion at the merchant’s point-of-sale (in effect, depriving the card issuer of its rationale for charging its fee for that transaction). As such, DCC is very much an alternative to the card issuer’s lock on the market, and is probably the only viable competition which might encourage the card issuers to more customer-friendly practices.

   For what it is worth, a quick survey of the the cards carried by my colleagues shows that many of the major card issuers - American Express, Citibank, Bank of America, Chase - are still charging a 3% fee for foreign transactions. By all means, let’s hope DCC forces some real competition for our hard-earned money. I don’t know about you, but my bank gets enough already.
8. 

   Comment by john on 8 January 2008:

   They seem to use currency fluctuations to get more out of there cash. Anyway you can;t do anything if they implement that in your expense? but that is not nice.
9. 

   Comment by Squeezal on 8 January 2008:

   The dynamic word was being used to take more cash from traveler’s pockets, I hope the rates and fees will now be fixed, not “dynamic”.
10. 

    Comment by Riley Poole on 8 January 2008:

    You are right Ettu, the news doesn’t relate directly but fact is people have realized that they do not want the “extra” charges, period. DCC is no different than the extraneous charges that banks were charging, just as banks buried these fees in the fine print, DCC itself is nothing more than a glorified currency exchange tool at the POS. For service providers such as Planet Payment to try to make a living off of it is just completely out of line. While I get that they provide the front end processing which added cost to them, the very fact that they’ve spent the past 8 years trying to gain traction off of loosing the third party billing marketplace several years ago to paypal is just proof positive.

    As is probably no secret, I just despise companies that try to make their money off the end consuming arguing that there is real value when in fact there is no tangible value and then burying that in the fine print, in the legal world they call that unjust enrichment and in this world, they call it business.

    Again, this was more of what’s to come of DCC, it’s not long before Fexco and Planet are part of the next waive of lawsuits to recover these fees from unsuspecting consumers because all they did was move the money from the bank to themselves.
11. 

    Comment by Ettu Brute on 9 January 2008:

    Riley, I hear what you are saying, but don’t you think you are going a tad overboard? I don’t like having extra charges any more than the next guy. However, the fees of which this posting complains seem to be a fact of life, against which we can vote with our feet. For example, I don’t like paying $1.00 every time I withdraw my own money from an ATM, but I’ll still swallow it rather than go through the hassle of going to my own bank branch. Does that make the bank a criminal enterprise? Of course not.

    Look, I don’t want to come across as a jerk, but your argument taken to its practical conclusion would mean the end of simple conveniences for which at least some of us are prepared to pay. No one wants to feel like they’ve been duped, but so long as the cost is reasonable and disclosed upfront, and you have the choice not to use the service, then why is there an issue?
12. 

    Comment by Fendy on 25 January 2008:

    Seriously, I don’t really understand this article and all the comments on this one made me even more confused. So, are they charging the fees simply because it’s overseas or are they charging the fees because of currency conversion?
13. 

    Comment by joe on 22 February 2009:

    Several months ago I obtained a quote in euros and reserved at one of Home Plazza’s hotels in Paris. This was confirmed at the time I booked in and the bill I received from the hotel was 1140 euros which was correct. I paid with a euro-denominated debit/Visa credit card linked to a euro account in a UK bank.

    When I received the statement from my bank, the charge from the hotel, via Fintrax, was GBP 938.10 which then, of course, had to be converted by my bank to euros for debit to my account. Thus I paid for a totally unnecessary double currency conversion with a loss of EUR 81:00.

    The hotel knew it was a euro-denominated card and this was or should have been known to Fintrax. The reason I use a euro-denominated card in euro-zone countries is, perhaps not surprisingly, so euro-denominated payments can be debited directly to my account without an exchange rate transaction. I consider the intermediate conversion of a euro-denominated invoice to sterling by the hotel or their processors for debit to a euro-denominated card is a fraud.

    Prior to this transaction, I was unaware of this scam. An associated trap I can see is that if a customer sees this happening it is essential that the whole transaction be cancelled rather than it being reversed by a credit transaction. If it is merely reversed, the customer will lose the exchange rate spread on the transaction which is likely to be seven to eight per cent.

    On their website Fintrax state “The Fintrax DCC System uses a patented method which links a payments transaction to an embedded “bank reference table” (BRT) or “card recognition table” (CRT). This table automatically identifies the currency of the issued card.”. That is false. My card was euro-denominated but the charge was converted to sterling.

    To date, the excuse of Fintrax is that their account with the French hotel chain is in sterling. That is irrelevant. Whether an organization wishes to have an account in euros, sterling, roubles or anything else should be of no concern to the customer.
14. 

    Comment by Jack9999 on 23 July 2009:

    This article is a little mis-guided. If DCC never existed and we use our cards abroad with a different currency there is a margin applied to all tranactions. In this case though the credit card scheme and the bank that issued a card apply a margin of in or around 3%. You don’t get to see the unmargined rate or the margin applied.

    In the case of DCC, if applied correctly, you should get the choice to accept DCC or not. If you do accept the DCC option you should see the unmargined rate + the margin (around 3%) applied. Either way you pay a percentage. The difference here is that you make the choice, take the DCC rate or the Credit Card Sceme/Issuing Bank rate

    In regards to the margin applied its the same thing when you go to Walmarts to buy a can of beans, they buy it at one price and sell it to you at another. Thats life …..

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