Originally Posted by 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.
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Capital One is 1%.
Are you sure about this? Can you post a link that definitively shows the Walmart settlement (and note, it wasn't just Walmart but thousands of other retailers) caused the 1% foreign transaction fee? Not quite sure I see the connection here. My feeling is that Visa/MC changed from foreign exchange to foreign transaction because they were losing revenue because various merchants (e.g., Hertz) were changing the amounts into USD and bypassing the normal Visa/MC surcharge.
I'm not sure what you mean by a "separate line item" being charged by Visa/MC. Visa/MC no longer charge the consumer the 1% directly (as they used to when they built it into the exchange rate). They now bill the issuer the 1% and the issuer can charge the consumer whatever amount they want. This is why old credit card T&C used to say Visa/MC will tack on 1% and we'll tack on 2%. They now simply say we tack on 3%. This policy change was implemented sometime last year. Many issuers now break out the overall foreign purchase surcharge on a separate line. This is due to a class action lawsuit about the lack of transparency/disclosure related to the foreign exchange surcharges.
And I'm pretty sure Cap One is at 0%. Many people here on FT have posted anecdotal evidence showing that. Bank Rate seems to think the same:
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/cc/20050624b1.asp