Originally Posted by
turbo79
The foreign exchange spread in the app is 5 to 6%. You can't select HKD as a top-up currency, so no way to avoid it. Octopus really need to change this if they want people to use their tourist app rather than buy a physical card when they arrive. Lots of travellers now have zero-fee FX cards.
Well the admin cost of trading back the physical card is HK$11. If you're just using it for public transport (because you use the zero fee FX card for everything else) you'd be hard pushed to spend more than $50/day on average. So in a stay of, say, 5 days that $250 and the 5% exchange spread would be about $12.5.
Amongst the thousands of HK$ that the trip is costing you, is a difference of HK$1.5 really worth making a fuss about?