drbond

The fact is Visa and Mastercard updated their system to impose an association fee of 1%. All VI & MC cards will have a 1% Foreign Transactions Fee as a result of the "WALMART LAWSUIT SETTLEMENT" Everything Walmart does is good for Walmart and bad for everyone else. Now off of the soapbox. The associations charge 1% as a seperate line item. The banks can add a surcharge to this fee as per their contract. This amount can be from 0% to 5% for doing absolutely nothing. The result is that for a VI or MC you will pay between 1% & 6% for any foreign transactions. I did a little research and this is what I found out. Bank of America cards are all 3%, Chase cards are all 3%, HSBC is 2% eeck, American Express is 2%, Discover is 0% (but only good in North America), Nordstrom is 1%, most credit unions are 1%, Macys is 1%, Juniper Bank is 2%, US Bank is 3%, MBNA is 1% on some and 3% on others but will increase all cards to 3% as of April 2006, Capital One is 1%. I hope this information is of help to you.