Originally Posted by JaytheBarber

Successful redemptions so far for my upcoming trip to Italy include tickets to the Vatican and tickets to the Roman Colosseum.

Originally Posted by Happy

Not true at all.

If you SM Chase on their no forex fee cards, they ALWAYS tell you Visa would charge 1% Network fee - Look, it is not called Forex fee, but "Network" fee.

FIA amex card specifically tells you there would be 1% process fee for transactions ORIGINATED outside US. Personally I have other cards carry 0% forex fee and earn at least 1%, so no reason to even bring the FIA amex with me on trips.

BTW, since it is NOT called "forex" fee, the 1% is BUILT IN the exchange rate, NOT a separate line item as stipulated by the legislation.

You can ban your head against the wall on this but will NEVER get a clear-cut answer. My take is, this is how the banks get away from charging the 1% and have no need to list it separately.

This also applies to the Fido and Schwab ATM cards. When the banks charge the 1% separately on the withdrawal slip, Fido would NOT reimburse it. I have the experience with BNP at Aix-en-Provence, where the BNP has 1 euro listed as "purchase" on a 100 euro withdrawal. Fido said that was the 1% Visa Network fee and would not be reimbursed.

I use the same BofA 123. I also carry other cards from Chase / Citi / CapOne that have 0% forex fee. More often than not, I found the 1% Visa fee is more like 0.5% or less. No reason to spend lots of time and energy to just "figure it out". Just treats it as a very tiny increase of your total trip cost and be done with it.