Understandably, this thread hasn't seen many posts over the last 15 months, so I wanted to provide a new data point. Mrs. Majuki and I just returned from Aruba, our first international destination since the beginning of the pandemic, and I did not see a single instance of DCC. I will caveat this report though by saying that we only had and used USD denominated cards, so I can't tell if there would be hidden DCC like percysmith experienced in the Maldives if one were to use a non-USD card.

The experience was mostly like in the Maldives where things were priced solely in USD, but some merchants were more like the Cayman Islands with a 1.75 AWG = 1 USD rate. This is off by about 2.2% from the official exchange rate of 1.79 AWG = 1 USD, so one might come out ahead compared to being charged in AWG if the card used has a currency exchange fee.

We stayed at the Renaissance, and the website prices, reservation, and preauthorization at check in all showed USD amounts only. The hotel's food and beverage receipts indicated AWG and USD amounts with an exchange rate of 1.78 AWG = 1 USD. The Starbucks in the shopping plaza next door was set up to charge to the room, but I opted to use my card the two times we were there.



The first night we went to dinner at a restaurant near the hotel with a Caribbean Mercantile Bank (CMB) handheld terminal. Since it was pay at the table, I saw the waitress press for USD before entering the amount. While I didn't ask if it was possible to try to get my card to process AWG, I've searched for data points of similar setups in Aruba or the Cayman Islands. My understanding is that trying a transaction in AWG with anything other than a local card denominated in AWG will fail. This was indirectly confirmed when I was trying to use an unattended kiosk to buy fuel. The attendant said I had to go inside to use a terminal that could process international cards.

Some merchants used the 1.75 to 1 exchange rate whereas others used 1.79 to 1. I found that many restaurants would price in USD, so I didn't necessarily feel like price inflation occurred with the 1.75 to 1 rate since the menu prices and credit card charge were in USD. Most fast food places (Dunkin' Donuts, McDonald's, and Taco Bell) priced in AWG and charged USD at the 1.75 to 1 rate. This seemed to be mostly the case at retailers as well, but there were some that only displayed USD and never indicated a price in AWG.



If one wanted to avoid the loss with establishments using the 1.75 to 1 rate, one could get AWG out of an ATM. I imagine this is possible, but I didn't withdraw any money while I was there.

I would definitely be curious if there were a merchant willing to try to process the transaction in AWG to see if it would work. I suspect that it wouldn't, but that's my only unanswered question.