Credit card: 1.2% international processing fee... avoidable?

Finance, Taxes, Banking, Insurance and Retirement
21

This is wrong thinking on so many levels.

The EUR card charged whatever rate was applicable at end of that or the previous day. As Revolut gives you real time FX rates, you are comparing the FX rate at different times.

EUR/CHF routinely moves more than 50 pips in a day, so it could be the totally opposite result as well. You were lucky that market moved in your favour, nothing to do with what the providers are charging you.

22
No, you can't know that as you don't know which Euro card was used nor how that card operates.

I will get back with how much the transaction was and how much the difference was when I receive that info.

23
The majority of credit cards have one fixed conversion rate per day per currency.

Would be interested to hear which credit cards use live rates?

24
I never said they didn't.

25

Name one please? Instead of rolling eyes?

I said majority as I can only speak about the major card providers I am aware of. No idea what happens in Russia or China or South Africa.....

26
Wow, I just checked Swisscard here and just looked at USD CHF rates for 26 Aug.

They have USDCHF at 1.0022496 and at no point was the rate on this day over 0.9817. That's a juicy spread holy molly

27

How do you think credit card companies make money other than screwing punters royally on exchange rates and spurious "foreign administration fees" of up to 2% ?

28
Me neither. Of course, this is the standard rip-off practice.

29
Then by choosing to pay abroad in CHF (with UBS and most other banks cards) one pays the merchant DCC exchange rate which has been found by EU studies to be almost always worse than card issuer exchange rate and then the card issued fee.

Therefore in most cases it is better to pay in local currency.

For Revolut weekend markup one can exchange some money before a weekend purchase.

However, recently there was a news of multiple Revolut customer phishing attack (or hack of Revolut itself, nobody really knows yet) where people lost considerable amounts of money and were not sure if/when Revolut refounds the losses.

30
But if you pay something in a different currency they also charge you 1.75% surcharge for paying in a foreign currency... 1.75% + UBS rate is probably as bad as the 1.75% + DCC exchange rate.

I couldn't find a solution for it, so I just stopped using the credit card outside of Switzerland.

To avoid the tax you really have to get a credit card in each currency, or ofc, revolut, n26 or any similiar app.

I'm personally using revolut... To avoid the weekend problem I try to convert the to the currency needed before the weekend.

31
As promised, the transaction detail:

It was on a Sunday.

The amount was €88,68 - charged to our Euro card. It was charged immediately, so they don't use the rates at the end of that day, but you may be right in that they use the rates at the end of the previous day . I don't know if that card uses live rates, I would have to ask them.

The amount Revolut wanted for the exact same amount in CHF (which was CHF 97.70) was €90,48 - this is €1,80 higher than what the Euro card charged us.

In my view this is a significant difference, especially if you are right and both cards were using the Friday rate.

A €1,80 difference on a transaction of €90 is astonishingly large. Until that transaction we thought Revolut offered the best rates.

32
Sunday is not a good day to make that comparison as Revolut charges a markup value to prevent losses.

I agree that 1.8€ is a lot (more than the 1% stated here) but to have a fair comparison you should do that with a transaction during a work day.

33
I would also argue however that on the practical side of things, a heck of a lot of transactions occur at the weekend when people are buying stuff. One needs to know where one stands on non-banking days too.

Revolut do not offer the best rates.

34
Yes. But as the terms are quite clear, a smart and easy way of avoiding the fee would have been to convert some money from CHF to EUR on Friday using the app.

Takes 30 seconds and would save you a few euros.

35
A good Revolut rule to follow: Don't use your Revolut card on weekends, unless you have that local currency in your account. Especially when making a purchase in a currency deemed illiquid. For example, a Thai Baht purchase will add a 2% fee on a weekend.

Source

I've loved using Revolut for transferring money back to the states at essentially no cost. But their business practices are concerning.

36
As many have said, it's quite predictable when you would need a foreign currency during the weekend (say in a holiday), and just change in advance the estimated amount and some - whatever you have left you can change back next week because there is no charge . Yes, you are exposed to currency fluctuations along this period, but then you are exposed to that anyway - and so is Revolut.

And, frankly, how you can call an incidental a 2% loss astonishingly large when on a typical swiss credit cards you lose 3.5-4% on pretty much any transaction is beyond me. Sometimes I wonder whether you are just trolling.

37
Far too faffy. I can't know in advance exactly what I am going to buy over the weekend, plus there is the hassle of not only having to load the money onto the card, but also to covert everything into the various currencies I need, ready for the mere possibility of transactions in these. So now Revolut is only good for non-banking days? That's ridiculous and again, simply not worth the hassle. I only use my for Swiss credit cards for CHF transactions, so there is no fee.

For foreign transactions, mainly in Euro, we have cards in Euros, so again no fee. For non-Euro transactions with this Euro card, the rate is extremely good and there is no fee.

My partner wanted to pay for this particular CHF purchase alone and so decided to see how much in Euros was needed to do it.

It was only because the top up didn't work we used the Euro card for the CHF purchase and noticed that the rate was better than Revolut's rate.

38
It didn't pull a fast one on you, it's always been this way. I encourage you to familiarize yourself with the terms and conditions of all of your cards. IMO avoiding weekends or transferring cash beforehand is a pretty easy rule... and their justification for the policy is also reasonable.

To emphasize another cool feature of it, they allow up to 200 CHF of international ATM withdrawals per month with no fees for their premium-less account (the ATM itself will still charge its fee). As my post finance debit card never works, it's been a great lifeline for me.

39
I personally used Revolut for a couple of years, with few problems and found it a handy alternative.

I have since changed my mind.

Previously they allowed a far higher amount for cash withdrawals. 200 francs is hardly a serious amount.

40

Just load a bit of money up and leave it, we always need some Euros or GBP's to pay for books from Amazon or whatever.

The amounts are small, 200 of each is more than sufficient.

Revolut is good and saves me considerable money over a traditional card, but as with all things, you need to learn how it works and work it to your particular liking