Originally Posted by
biggestbopper
IMHO, not exactly so.
The issue of who charges the fees is, at best, fuzzy. While Visa & MC add a fee to the wholesale forex price of, allegedly, 1%, it is not clear that a very large hunk of this is not rebated to the card issuers in various hidden ways. Kinda like "holdbacks" at new car dealers, used to obscure the real price the dealer pays the factory so they can claim to be selling to you at "invoice" price.
Anything over 1% forex charge is clearly just excess profits for your friendly credit card company.
Yep, that's the going theory. But historically credit unions haven't been in the business of screwing their members over, so that "going theory" may need to be changed.
Since neither one of us works for visa/mc, a credit union, or one of the big banks, we can't be sure who along that food chain decided to raise their rates...
All moot if you decide to carry one of the four cards in my post above.