Originally Posted by
Kremmen
Plus, of course, in refund situations, they are controlling the transactions on both sides. You don't really think they exchange your money from one currency and then back again, do you? No, they just do nothing and skim some money off the top, before giving you back less.
Originally Posted by
shinjukuflyer
Yeah no of course, didn't mean to imply Visa is being charitable. I agree it is sneaky because you would expect a refund on the same date to use the same rate. They are acting like a currency shop here.
Ahh, makes sense, total naiveté on my behalf to assume that Visa was providing a flat exchange rate in both directions. Looking at the rates Visa has on their site it does look pretty close to what Chase passed through on the CSP:
$1 AUD = $0.805219 USD (Jan 24, 2015)
$0.7882792 USD = $1 AUD (Jan 24, 2015)
$1 NZD = $0.729827 USD (Jan 31, 2015)
$0.72137217 USD = $1 NZD (Jan 31, 2015)
Frustrating to the consumer, seems odd though that Visa gets to play with the spread like this (anyone else with an opinion if the spread essentially 1-2% is excessive or acceptable?)
Slightly related - as they're batching transactions for processing, seems like they should be able to reconcile purchases/refunds before doing the currency conversion, rather than being able to play the forex market with the float...