Originally Posted by
percysmith
As laid out by Visa/MC, it really never will be. There's never any meaningful competition if you have one DCC provider competing against the card association, and by a combination of misrepresentations, social engineering and outright non-compliance, cardholders rarely make meaningful, informed choices anyway.
You can't really put the genie back in the bottle - even if there is some way to compel Visa/MC to turn off DCC support in their card associations tomorrow, they're either in breach of their contractual arrangements or the DCC providers will sue Visa/MC for lack of due process anyway.
You can't really provide effective competition against the two card associations because of network effect so this problem isn't going away on its own.
You can't let issuers opt-out of DCC on behalf of cardholders either, because on the flip side, they will all choose to do so (and protect their FTF/Foreign Currency Conversion fees) which will leave Visa/MC exposed to antitrust charges.
What's left?
I suggested a Visa-operated chargeback mechanism before.
But what's probably simpler is to allow Visa/MC to let cardholders opt-in to no DCC.
It will be like a do-not-call register. Visa runs the site.
Anyone who registers cannot be DCCed no matter what how fxcked the terminal is.
Interesting option, though I won't trust certain competition watchdogs like ACCC going for it though, they're trying to make Visa make DCC more available!
But then again, Amex doesn't allow DCC , right? Where there's a will, there's a way. The acquirers who push DCC always say don't blame us. We're just providing a service many cardholders find convenient and if truth be told, as we've just discussed, many do. DCC in and of itself is not a scam provided I as a customer am given the choice required by visa/mc. In that regard, acquirers who push dcc may have a valid point that they are providing a service for those who wish it and in all fairness even though I hate DCC since I'm a big boy and can do the mental arithmetic on my own when I purchase something for 20 euro, I pretty much know how much I'm spending in USD, there are still those who can't or don't want to handle it. Whose fault is that?