Quite the opposite, the merchant lobby is EXTREMELY powerful and good at convincing governments that it is on consumers' side (see: interchange fee regulation). I would be less surprised to see a law passed allowing FORCED DCC (in the name of protecting the consumer from the evil banks and allowing the friendly benevolent merchant to make the choice) than I would be seeing DCC banned (since that means the merchant makes less money and the evil banks get their way).

P.S. Remember Visa and Mastercard do NOT support DCC by choice, they do so because consumer protection laws (antitrust) means they have to given their huge market share, or risk an antitrust suit.

P.P.S. Here's an example for anyone who doesn't believe me that DCC is presented as being pro-consumer: http://www.law360.com/articles/41251...antitrust-suit

For hotel-collected prepaid hotel rates, hotels don't think they need consent to DCC (they do)

Actually Visanet is now TSYS. http://www.dotnetcharge.com/vital.htm It is also not exclusive. At the present time the two, MasterCard and Visa, see half or more of their brand traffic but not too much more. The data flows depend on the acquirer capabilities and mandatory data flows, almost all of which is automated in some cases and not others. Chargebacks are frequently automated while disputes may or may not be. The local standards for accepting a dispute may be cumbersome and require paper even though the acquirer is fully capable of an automated process. Such is the case for at least two major Singapore acquirers. I do not know about others.

To enter into a detailed discussion of how the automated side of this works we would need to deal with proprietary information and I'd need to retrieve proprietary documents. As a statement of fact, among people who are veterans running US-based dispute/chargeback operations many do not understand how this works and can work. After decades working around the industry i was astonished about the level of misinformation and conflicting information even among dispute/chargeback software vendors and processing vendors also.

Despite the foregoing, few ATM networks have any clear standards for disputes much less automated processes.Some major ones in some countries have no established procedures at all! The major card brands do have standards but processors can and do fail to comply with the standards. Some of the standards themselves (required notification ageing, for example) are interpreted differently by different issuers. However, some processors automate a long list of dispute categories including autochargebacks.

I do not know whether I have responded precisely to your points but I have tried to do so. From an end user perspective I know it looks as though paper is the only way, but it is not. Some issuers require paper to meet desire to reduce disputes and/or to meet local documentation requirements. FWIW, Singapore and Malaysia have both just been in the midst of major changes to card processor issuance, data management and processing legislation.

I worry about PIN and DCC more than signature. Or even signature pads like El Cortes Ingles or Lotte for the matter.

It'll be rort paradise if banks like Bank of China will be allowed it. Their terminals aren't in any compliance program, they can be hard wired to "yes" DCC all the time. There'll be nothing for cardholders to write.

I think this is already currently permissible in Europe, so Harrods and Gallaries Lafayette are allowed to collect DCC decisions at the POS. God forbid China be allowed to join in.

The US merchant lobby is indeed incredibly powerful, so much so that they have delayed chip/pin for years because of the big retailer database concerns, now mostly changed. Europe is a quite different matter. The EU has already gone far to equate credit and debit interchange, admittedly a benefit to merchants but the DCC and related issues are easily visible in the EU prohibition of cross border treatment differences within the Eurozone. DCC was dreamed up in the first place by, allegedly, a Visa executive, and while usually the views of the practice seem negative by industry executives they are far from universally so. Despite the US reluctance to close any opportunity for merchant ripoff so long as it is sufficiently arcane the Brussels and ECB views are different, partly because their policies tend to be influenced by technocrats rather than politicians. The interchange processes are a clear case in point. How many politicians anywhere even know what it is? How many European large retailer CEO's do?

Obviously the potential for regulation regarding DCC is a matter of opinion, and i absolutely know people who are very knowledgable arguing both sides. I'm guessing your are one of those by your comments. i respect your opinion and do think you've made a quite plausible case, but i still think there will be EU activity in this arena. One reason is that a Brussels-based colleague of mine has recently been asked to brief some EU staffers on DCC. Does that mean anything? I do not know, but I hope so.

First, let's not bring ATMs to this.

Let's just focus on what I believe my DCC rights are:

- the requirement for my checking a tick box in a card-present situation https://usa.visa.com/download/mercha...n.pdf#page=446

(with exception for Europe merchants https://usa.visa.com/download/mercha...n.pdf#page=751)

- the requirement for my express permission to apply DCC in a service agreement https://usa.visa.com/download/mercha...n.pdf#page=530

Your chargeback (if that can be segregated from dispute) mechanism may deal with 99% of errors. Those we don't even know about as consumers. I'm sure they are important in such a mass scale, multi-party system and we've been relieved of a lot of processing errors.

What we're dealing with are disputes about how we are charged. Take your SGD20 transaction - the customer ticks SGD20 but the system is hard-wired to select the cardholder's currency (USD). The Singapore merchant and acquirer send out all the necessary and correct signals to indicate cardholder agreed to USD15.80. The card is present, valid, has enough credit and a proper auth code is obtained. But the cardholder ticked SGD20. How can you "automate" this dispute?

Doesn't have to be movable bands. The key is portability, a keychain sized pocket stamp would be perfect than carrying a big stamp with who know what may go wrong (ink all over the place, etc.)

If that's the case, a simple "bill in ___________ only" stamp would suffice leaving you to write in the foreign currency in the blank space with your own pen after it's stamped.


I know it's a long shot, but perhaps DCC can also be one option that can be automatically set by the cardholder side in the issuer database from their online account.

1. You go online to your credit card account
2. There's a DCC section with an optional tick mark that says "always decline DCC when offered"
3. Every transaction abroad then will be charged at the local currency rate rather than DCC, no matter what the POS does. The issuer's database in which the cardholder has already preset to decline all DCCs will triumph all selections done by the POS whether hardwired or pre-selected or not.

If enough cardholders complain to their banks to have them start offering this selective service within their online account, then it can be done. Just like the EMV conversion, the first bank that is able to bring this ability will gain the most saviest of all international travelers and will get a head start against their competition.

If the EMV conversion in the US has shown us something, is that competition between banks and financial institutions to gain cardholders (especially the ones who travel the most as they tend to be their best credit card customers) is still a strong part of our market economy and usually credit unions are far more friendlier to customers' needs over big name banks.

Banks already are capable of offering 0% FTF, despite that VISA and MC charges a 1% FTF on the network side. That means banks are capable of "eating up" the cost that VISA and MC charges the bank for foreign transaction fees.

Banks already are capable of doing some kind of preset authorization limitations online by the cardholder themselves, like the fact that many currently offer an online method where cardholders can enter in which countries they are visiting so as to prevent fraud monitoring to kick in while they are abroad.

Put the two and two together, I wouldn't think it would be impossible that banks can create an optional "decline DCC" tick mark online for each cardholder that is set within the issuer's servers that triumphs all POS made entries, if enough cardholders complain and write to their banks that they want this kind of service available.

First, ATM's need to be part of the discussion because ATM DCC charges are common, especially in China and there is inadequate data tracking available to immediately identify appropriate consumer approval. Some, such as HSBC just rebate the extra charge without question when the ATM transaction took place at an HSBC location. Others are worse and a manual process is required.

In your case the dispute is over falsification of approval and/or inadequate disclosure of a non-default option, right? In such a case there is no paper to offer as proof since the only thing you might offer is a receipt that amy or may not shed any light. Assuming no regulatory requirement exists where one does this, the dispute could be filed online or by telephone, data entered or downloaded stating the facts. if there is a receipt it can be scanned and attached online or otherwise sent to the issuer. It is then attached automatically to the file also automatically generated. If you telephone an operator must select the reason code, if online there is a drop down menu that equates to a reason code selector. That file then is combined put in the required Visa/MC or other format and off it goes. the suspense dates are automatically appended as are the require ticklers and followup steps. Any required network correspondence is automatically generated even if the network does not support automation.

That is a beginning of how the automated process works. The online side can be accomplished for DCC transactions usually with no human intervention at all. However, that depended entirely on the issuer involved even if there is no local regulatory interference. For a CC transaction all the pertinent data will be auto-matched including the customer receipt, if applicable.

BTW, if the transmittal file with transaction data at the issuer shows discrepancy in required data from the merchant processor an autochargeback can and does occur if the issuer systems support such. It never is debited from the cardholder account if it fails to meet submission requirements. I do not know how many US issuers have the capability to do that but I do know some of the processors that do.

That's the be all and end all of the majority of disputes we've been concerned about here. The receipt is needed!

Yes you have a beautiful system. But garbage in garbage out - it won't work until someone files a digital copy of the receipt - the "burden of proof" will depend on where you are.

And AFAIK no bank has offerred a front-end of its file uploading process to customers and banks. What are the receipt image requirements?

This is an intriguing idea, but what is to stop merchants from either 1) saying "sorry your card didn't work", or 2) surcharging foreign cards that don't accept DCC? The first is completely plausible in a foreign country, and the second may be a violation of the rules, but as we know, no one can do anything about it.

Visa/Mastercard/ACCC/[merchant lobby] won't facilitate it and can easily litigate against it - can easily portray the always declined option (whether opt-in or not) "deprives consumer of a choice". Comes from the same lobbying brains who said watering down the Sarbanes Oxley provisions to prevent another Enron will create jobs.

At some point in the China DCC thrad I conceded it is a surcharge, and should be treated accordingly as a bargaining factor.

That is precisely the posture i adopt as a consumer. Usually there is no point in arguing the merits, after all it is all about the price.

And if that should happen, there's always the class action lawsuit path as we did with foreign transaction fees.

Why should we let corporations make choices for us? Just because VISA/MC has billions in dollars doesn't mean we should let them rail over us. We managed to reverse some of their actions by making FTFs more clear through class action lawsuits.

We won FTFs.
We won the EMV conversion.
We can get banks to give us a selective DCC option section that we can preset ourselves online.

How would merchants know? No matter what merchants do, whatever selection they did on the POS side, the decline DCC is done automatically because the decline DCC option is already preset at the issuer side. And all transactions that are done online, especially in an EMV environment, goes to the issuer's server.

1. I hand card
2. Merchant processes it, tries to tack on DCC without providing the customer an option
3. Issuer server sees that cardholder preset decline DCC option
4. Goes through processing automatically without DCC
5. Merchant prints receipt thinking that they're getting more, probably not going to look at the receipt in detail anyway
6. I sign knowing that every transaction I make is without DCC as what I preset on the server end triumphs all POS entry choices
7. By the time I'm in my home country
8. Merchant sad to know that he/she get no DCC because cardholder already had it preset on issuer's servers

Identifying yourself as a foreigner is the last thing you ever want to do if you are trying to bargain for anything. Even pulling out a credit card is usually not a good idea.

The FTF lawsuit was about disclosure, not about providing options. Credit card companies aren't required to provide you with the option of having an FTF or not having an FTF, they are simply required to inform you of the cost. Similarly, if there were any DCC lawsuit, it would likely only be possible if DCC were not disclosed properly. As long as the receipt gives the amount charged, I don't see any basis for a lawsuit. Of course, IANAL.


It doesn't work that way. When the merchant "asks" for a certain amount of a certain currency, the issuer can neither lower the amount nor change the currency. All it can do is decline the transaction.

If I go to the bank and ask for a loan of 200 euros, they either say yes or no. They don't put USD 175 in an envelope and say "here you are".

If what the merchant wants does not match what the issuer is willing to pay (in both amount and currency) the transaction will not go through.