Originally Posted by PLin

I’m currently in Zurich, Switzerland and had brunch at a cafe yesterday. When I paid the bill, the terminal displayed a choice for USD or CHF (Swiss Francs). I told the server to process it as CHF, and he quickly processed it as USD anyway. When I asked him why he did that when I clearly said CHF, he said his boss instructed all the workers to do that automatically. The owner of the cafe told the staff that they lose money when processing in CHF. In reality, the cafe gains extra money from forcing the customer to use DCC. I showed him the DCC Wikipedia page, which says that Visa and Mastercard prohibit merchants from forcing the customer to use DCC, and he said he would mention it to his boss later.

In this case, DCC resulted in me getting 0.93 CHF per 1 USD rather than the current intrabank rate of 0.98. The total bill was only $70, so DCC caused me to pay about $3-4 more. I’m tempted to do a partial dispute with my credit card bank. I’ve been in 4 different countries in Europe this past month, and no other merchant has forced me to use DCC.