Originally Posted by
alanjrobertson
My understanding was that most if not all companies using VISA or MasterCard for payment processing used their rates for foreign currency transactions, but then obviously many of them then add their own fee (not the case for the cards mentioned a few posts up).
For example, taking 20/4/12 as the base date and GBP as base currency I get the following conversion rates
XE.com - a good way to find the 'official' mid-market rate (
http://www.xe.com/ict/?basecur=GBP&h...=27&image.y=11)
EUR = 1.2202817933
USD = 1.6124220635
MasterCard (
https://www.mastercard.com/global/cu...ion/index.html)
EUR = 1.223471
USD = 1.611250
VISA (
http://corporate.visa.com/pd/consume...r_ex_rates.jsp)
EUR = 1.220907
USD = 1.600499
AMEX (
https://global.americanexpress.com/m...pe=&Face=en_GB)
EUR = 1.218
USD = 1.6
So you can see that AMEX actually have the WORST exchange rate, and that is before their 2.99% fee is added on to things.
Therefore for a transaction of €500 on my Post Office MasterCard I would have paid £408.67.
For that same transaction on AMEX I would have paid £410.51 + 2.99% fee (£12.27), giving a total of £422.78. In other words £14.11 more than on my PO MasterCard.
Sorry to take up so much space explaining things but Amex really don't offer a good deal at all on forex. With a 0% fee their rates would still be the worst, but only just and you'd get MR points. With 2.99% fee on top of poor rates I avoid forex transactions on them at all costs (i.e. only use it for those transactions where I need travel insurance cover).
I may have misunderstood, but I have compared the $/£ rate used on my Mastercard statement and the rate used on an Amex statement for the same date. Amex offer the better rate, although then the 2.99% charge is applied. Once this has been done the cost is very similar (the difference between the two cards on a $215 transaction would have been 7p).
If the Post Office Mastercard rate is significantly below the rate applied by other Mastercards, then there will be a clear advantage to use it. But there seems to be little or not difference between Amex and other Mastercards on my very limited sample.