The reason I used wire transfer receiving fee as an analogy, is that banks are required to do something (although I'm not sure how much) for receiving cross-border funds, and the price tag for that is around $40.

In the case of CC, if a transaction happens abroad, and although everything is done electronically by Visa/MC, are banks still required to perform extra tasks for these cross-border CC transactions than for domestic transactions?

My point is wire transfers are done electronically by SWIFT network as well, and I doubt banks sort these SWIFT telegraphs by hand...

Please don't get me wrong, if home currency is charge abroad, Visa/MC won't charge the 1%, then charging 3% is pure ugly more profit for banks. Maybe banks adding 2% on top of the networks' 1% was intended to offset the somewhat workload for performing cross-border CC transactions. And, maybe banks realized DCC took it all away and there is still extra work for cross-border home currency transaction...