Originally Posted by
percysmith
From my experience, it's not consistent even during a posting day.
I ran two transactions on two different cards of identical amount within seconds of other with same merchant <-- same rate
I then took one of the cards for lunch a little later <-- slightly different rate, even though same posting date
So I think the rates posted in
https://www.mastercard.com/global/cu...ion/index.html and
http://www.visaeurope.com/en/cardhol...nge_rates.aspx
are indicative not conclusive. You can't get the exact rate stipulated on those pages, but from my experience and statement analysis, you won't go far from them either (you'll be within 0.10% of them, worse if your transaction is larger in my experience).
We in HK also kept a running thread of what our banks charged us for foreign currency, and the spread over the HK Association of Banks' rate that day
http://www.hongkongcard.com/forum/fo...ow.php?id=3939
I totally agree with you that it fluctuates a lot.
I wasn't expecting the GBP to USD rate to change this big during two days.
From MC:
4/9 1.67640096829
4/11 1.67189971277
From Visa:
4/9 1.674200
4/11 1.682000
4/9 is the transaction date, 4/11 is the posting date.
Mine was 1916 GBP to 3223 USD, so I assume it is a Visa transaction using the rate of 4/11, the posting date, not the transaction date, which is quite confusing. Why it doesn't use the rate of the transaction date, since the transaction happens on that date?
Also interesting, even though my IHG card has become MC, I still used the Visa card numbers (which is said to be invalid in a month) for this transaction. It's like two numbers are linking to the same account. Looks like when I used the Visa number, I got the rate of Visa. If I was using the MC number, I don't know, maybe I could save a few bucks, as the MC rate on 4/11 is cheaper?