Actually we don't lose the 0.3%-0.5% (Unionpay wholesale rate markup?) - most HK Unionpay cards are Foreign Currency Translation fee-free whereas all HK Visa/MC pass the Visa/MC 1% (without seperate disclosure).

Besides, most HK Unionpay cards are dual currency so there is no translation - cardholders have a RMB account in HK where they can settle in RMB.

However it's a matter of choice. What if I would like to enjoy a HSBC promo on its Visa/MCs for HK$1/mile on foreign spending (roughly a 10% rebate)? Can't do it if DCC.

Yes, I am of similar age, born in 1980 where it would be right on the boundary of being a Gen-Xer or a Millennial. Though I do consider myself more of a Millennial as I grew up most of my early childhood under Reagan (born in November 1980 so technically my first few months in existence was Carter), saw the end of the Cold War, watched TMNT, Alf, Full House, Duck Tales, Married with Children, The Simpsons, played Nintendo, had a Game Boy, had a Sony Walkman, watched MTV, listened to The Cure and Van Halen, and my teenage years seeing the dawn of the internet take shape.

Ever watched the video The Decade You Were Born? Fascinating stuff on what we as those born in the 1980s share in common, as probably do others born in other decades.

What we share in common is that:

1. We grew up in an generation of extremely diverse cultures and ethnicity; not uncommon to find a classroom full of minorities from all over the world, some you ended up becoming best friends with. Hence we're more open to different ideas and trying out new things than previous generations.

2. We grew up in a wide variety of stimulation never seen in previous generations, from the old TV, cassette tapes, VCRs, MTV, video games, comic books, renting Blockbuster video...all the way to live streaming on the internet via Hulu and Netflix of today. We did it all, from the first age of Napster and mp3 downloads to downloading fansubbed anime off of bittorrent.

3. Playing video games actually helped us get used to upcoming technology and became naturally curious about the world (ooh, let's try to find all the secret places in The Legend of Zelda or break all the bricks in Super Mario Bros.)

4. We're the last "youngest" generation to see and somewhat sort of remember what the world used to be like in the age before cell phones and the internet. We grew up memorizing our friends' phone numbers in a push button phone, we grew up watching old NTSC VHF/UHF color TV and analog cable, we entered adulthood with that incessant Nokia ringtone and "Google" becoming part of the Oxford dictionary.

There is no FTF-free cards like Chase Sapphire Preferred in HK?

I do feel that Unionpay has a markup about 0.5% on rates. It is close to what major banks charge for rate markups.

So these dual currency cards in HK, they have a Unionpay RMB account, and a Visa/MC HKD account?

Chase eats the 1% on CSP right?
Not for V/MC - even the most aggressive V/MC passes the 1% along but simply adds no mroe.

Unionpay only - no Visa/MC on those cards
Two accounts - one RMB (usable only within the PRC) and HKD (usable outside PRC including HK)

Smartphones and prepaid travelling data has really liberalised travel for me and my missus.

We do trips we wouldn't dream of ten years ago even if we had the financial wherewithal.

We are far more comfortable now than ten years ago travelling outside of a tour group (HKers used to stick to agency tour groups like the group that was shot up in Manila). We can research transport and places to go in advance and on the fly. We Google Map every taxi ride. And if someone doesn't speak English (or Mandarin) we use Google Translate.

Yes, here card issuers eat the 1%. They used to build it into the rate where it would get muddled but there was a lawsuit that (largely?) put a stop to this. For instance, if I use a Chase card with a 0% FTF or withdraw money from my Fidelity cash management account at 0% FTF, I know the amount on the posting date matches the Visa exchange rate calculator exactly. It definitely beats the 3% FTF common a few years ago and $5 + 3% withdrawals at a foreign ATM.

For the most part, I think this transcends many Baby Boomer generations across all cultures. Baby Boomers are relatively financially stable. Japanese Baby Boomers tend to go with organized groups like HIS, Kintetsu and JTB, American Baby Boomers go with Celebrity Cruises or look at AAA and AARP travel catalogs. A common trait of Baby Boomers is "I don't want to figure stuff out, I'd rather pay money and let the travel agency do all the thinking for me." My 67 year old aunt in Japan is similar in naiveness to many American Baby Boomer travelers as JEFFJAGUAR mentioned, "I don't mind paying for DCC in Hawaii because I know what the charge is in JPY" and trying to dissuade her not to do so is useless. :p

In contrast, the Millennial generation share the common trait of being scrapped with money due student debt and poor job market, have literally a sea full of information at their fingertips that enables them to find the best bang for the buck. We need to stretch our dollar to the fullest. The ultra-low end backpacker market and trendy/hipster type youth hostels has grown a lot in the past decade ever since the internet changed the way we see travel. It used to be sharing notebooks and word of mouth, now it's sharing travel blogs and reading hostelworld reviews. "Paying" for stuff using rewards earning credit cards is a must have. Being connected to the internet for constant info and social media is like an addiction for our generation. :eek:

This.

My parents are of a similar mentality and will pay for the organized tour like Tauck or cruise ship like Holland America but don't much care for foreign independent travel unless it's an English speaking country or a Western European country that sees a lot of foreign tourists. (It was like pulling teeth getting them to Taiwan in December 2012 to meet the in-laws. :D) I think these types are far more susceptible to DCC and just want as much familiarity as possible even while traveling abroad.

This part reminds me of a friend (a millennial) who used to complain to me how utterly boring it was to travel across Japan with his parents (baby boomer).

Everywhere they went, they ended up staying at a major American hotel chain like Hilton, eating at McDonalds or a family restaurant, going to a plain old department store for some shopping of "boring" items (as he said), maybe a little Buddhist temple or Shinto shrine but not staying there for length of time to understand or feel the zen that goes along with it, and mostly travel by hired taxis.

"Why would they spend money to come all the way to Japan only to eat a Big Mac at McDonalds and not at least once try real Japanese food?" he would say. :D

He ended up going back to Japan several years later and stayed there for two months doing what he could never do with his parents around: actually experience Japan from staying at onsen ryokan, eating Japanese food, shopping for anime goods at Akihabara, and travel by train and bus.

I never knew banks had to segregate fees until I deliberately charged (a small amount of) Euros to my AUD card and saw the 3% broken out.

We do have a near equivalent of a 0% card - Fubon Bank here charges 1.85% Foreign Currency Conversion Fee and no FTF and rebates points that can be converted for HK$100 cash rebate per $5,000 foreign spend, or 2%. Of course this means you get rounded down to nearest $5,000 every points expiry, which this bank aggressively does every year.

I don't necessarily agree. I think it's a matter of familiarity.

OK, maybe my mother is a more world-wise baby boomer than yours. But still an old fashioned one.

She still has a stack of greenbacks hidden under the bed - I recently took them out cos we're finally going to places where they are really accepted (Cambodia and Guam) and found some notes still bear the signature of Robert Rubin (I took them out and banked them into my USD account).
She doesn't ATM - either her messenger walks a cash withdrawal slip to her bank (and by standing arrangement her bank manager will accept such slips up to about US$10K) or her bank manager walks with his cash float to her office (in hongkongcard.com this was called "walking ATM").
And if she needs foreign banknotes (not travelling with me) her bank manager does the conversion and passes the foreign banknotes to her in the same way as her HK$ cash <-- always at the bank rate but for non-trade currencies like THB and KRW I find the rates can be off as much as 10%.

Ancient right?

I recently spotted she's been DCCed in Bangkok. I didn't go. From personal experience I know she was most likely given a quote slip and accepted it. Perhaps she compared it with the marked-up rate her bank gave her and thought its a good deal. Yes she has Yahoo Finance on her smartphone and a roaming connection but I have no luck getting her to look at anything but her stock and bonds portfolio (no luck getting her to add currencies on her own).

On the other hand when I told one of her friends (as a proxy of her - I paid for her) that their Dongguan Golf Club wanted to charge HK$1.265/RMB (compared to HK$1.2325/RMB HKAB rate) the sales manager nearly lost his head.

I have at least trained my mom to always ask for "local currency". However, I don't think she will be a stubborn as those of us on the forum to ascertain that she's actually been charged in the local currency. My parents don't carry smartphones (even though they pay for a data plan with Verizon Wireless :rolleyes:). They refuse to allow me to lend them a phone overseas or help them acquire a local SIM card. They never use an ATM, and they don't check any accounts online. I think I have more of a fighting chance getting DCC disabled at a Global Payments terminal in China than convincing my parents that their ways are outdated. :D

I think everyone here has such issues when it comes to their own grandparents, parents, and themselves. And it has been that way for eons of human existence. There's even hieroglyphs in the Pyramids of Giza that rat on how "young people these days are narcissistic and lazy." It was true back then, it hold true today. :D

Flash-forward several decades from now, our grandchildren will be looking at us how ancient we are because we still use online billpay when they are doing things telepathically. And we'll be saying "you little whippersnappers are so lazy you don't even want to use your fingers!" LOL :D

As for my mom, it took a while for her to deposit checks and cash at the ATM. She still buys things with her debit card rather than chasing after points and miles. Very unitask, she has an US issued JCB card, her only use is to use it at Japanese grocery stores and while in travel in Japan, but is generally not interested in collecting JCB cash back points by using them wherever Discover is accepted.

Great discussion in these last few posts.

My parents kept on making this mistake through their European cruise vacation and at transit points/short trips in Asia as well. They always assumed that converting back to the home currency = saving money, and even after I repeatedly warned them to ask for "local currency", they still keep on doing it by reflex.

Even more ridiculous is how using a Canadian credit/ATM card, I'm offered DCC in USD sometimes (quite notably, Credit Suisse offered USD DCC for a Canadian card at their ATMs) at exorbitant rates, and I would have to pay the 2.5% on top to convert USD to CAD. And yet, I've had friends fall for this many times as they assume converting to USD first saves them money as opposed to CHF-CAD direct.

I hate to think how many people DCC has fooled - such an easy way to make money off unsuspecting tourists/visitors. Almost every time I've seen others face DCC at checkout lines when using foreign cards (in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan etc.) that person has always chosen to be charged in their home currency. It's just slimy how the entire thing is marketed and presented by merchants (I fell victim to RyanAir once, as they auto-DCCed my transaction once I entered my credit card number with a small line of text that appeared.)

At least my parents have gotten with the times a few years ago, where they started putting everything on their credit cards to collect cash back/points.

I am starting to think that DCC idea is really geared toward the Baby Boomer generation of travelers.

The Baby Boomers, as they retire, will travel more. It's the perfect business model: make money off the wealthiest generation and give them what they want and charge a price for it. And walla, you have the DCC scheme. And a vast majority of Baby Boomers wouldn't see this as a scam, but more as a service.

It ends up sucking for Millennial travelers because we're the generation that's most likely to research all the options beforehand. We know there's no such thing as service these days without a price. We're called the generation with high BS meters. Tripadvisor, wikitravel, Wikipedia, Google, are our tools. It doesn't come that hard for us to come up with the details of the DCC scheme. Hence, we're likely to see DCC more as a scam than service.

And when it comes to Millennials trying to teach Baby Boomers, well we already have several examples of it ending up in vain right here. It's always going to end up being a "but Dad/Mom, you're getting ripped off!" vs "meh, I don't care/not willing to change etc. etc." and it's going to be a hard time doing so. :D