I don't believe purchases settle in a fixed number of days. This might swamp the effects of different time zones.

The MC pending fellow might have a bank that charges fees or it might be DCC.

Discrepancies can vary widely, although 1% is a lot. Please do post when they settle and compare to the web site numbers.

I've been focusing on EUR/USD. It's not clear all currencies have the same spreads, either magnitude or direction.

Could anyone help me with this question?

I have a upcoming trip to Jamaica, staying in a resort which all charges are in USD. If I am going to use a credit card with foreign transaction fee (for example, Amex HH Surpass), will I still get charged with FTF?

Not if you use an American Express card. American Express adds a fee only when the transaction currency is different from you billing currency. However, if you use a MasterCard or VISA there will probably be a fee because the network charges based on the country where the transaction occurs, even if there is no currency conversion.

Thanks for the clarification, Mia.

I'm currently in Tokyo and I'm getting consistently better rates on MC vs Visa. I'll post data points when I get back, but JPY seems to be one of the currencies were MC wins out by ~1%.

Hi All

I also just came back from Okinawa.

Timing was a little bit off, that I caught the surge of JPY at the end of my trip.

Below are the transactions and their rates.

A+:

T:3, P:5, J:3770, U:33.94, R:111.078374
T:3, P:7, J:10304, U:94.03, R:109.582048
T:3, P:7, J:12286, U:112.12, R:109.579022

IHG:

T:2, P:4, J:126000, U:1126.71, R:111.830018
T:4, P:6, J:41290, U:375.57, R:109.939559

SPG:

T:3, P:, J:1221, U:10.89, R:112.121212
T:3, P:, J:5184, U:46.25, R:112.086484
T:4, P:, J:19100, U:173.24, R:110.251674

Here are the rates from MC.com:

4:111.090000
5:109.940000
6:109.580000
7:107.670000

From those numbers, my takes are:

1) The posting dates that banks in USA use are one day behind MC.com.

2) A+ and IHG both use the same rates and are identical to the ones at MC.com. There IS NO 1% hidden fee on A+, at least for JPY to USD.

3) If we don't go too deep into numbers, I as a consumer would use my SPG to do purchases in Japan. First, it offers very competitive rates against MC: paying too much attention to posting dates is not practical for general consumers, so if we just look at transactions on the each different date, SPG do consistently better; Secondly, 1 SPG points should equal out, if not exceed, 2 A+ points or 1 IHG point.

4) Looks like Amex uses rates of the transaction dates, evidence is the last transaction of SPG vs the first transaction of A+, also considering my take #1. So if the destination currency is climbing, Amex should be better, and Vice Versa. Everyone please see whether this makes sense.

I didn't include Visa because we all know what the results would be like. But I'm still waiting for my Discover transactions to appear. It goes through JCB, and the pending amount looks competitive, but not competitive enough to offset the rewards shortcoming when compared with SPG.

Hope this helps.

That's great. All I said was that all of the other evidence, including explicit statements by multiple (I talked to at least five) representatives said that they do pass it on. It's great that it turns out that that's not the case.

Hmmm, maybe I should be using my SPG instead of Citi Prestige. :)

Though I value KrisFlyer points at 5-10c.

SQ is an SPG transfer partner.

Ah yeah, sorry. For travel etc the Prestige earns more points.

Unbonused spend always goes on SPG anyway. :)

The Discover transaction finally got posted.

T:3, P:4, J:8388, U:76.71, R:109.346891

Compared with other transactions happening on the same day, I'd say Amex>MC>Discover(JCB).

Of course this is only true for that time period when JPY was climbing. But I would say using Amex SPG is a good choice nonetheless for JPY>USD.

I'm not sure if I've done two foreign transactions on my SPG Amex on the one day before, but I did recently.
Same currency. Same date online.
First processed at 0.9975 x xe.com rate.
Second at 1.0038 x xe.com rate. (i.e. 1.006311 x the first transaction's rate!)

When Amex can vary this much during a single day (or, at least, what Amex claims is a single day), you need a good number of transactions to make predictions from.

Interesting. I'll keep digging.

If you charge two things on the same day, but the charges are posted on different days, you can get two rates. Were they posted on the same date?

That's my question as well.

I've done some heavy using of SPG Amex in Japan (100+ transactions). Never saw the rates among same-day transactions varying that much.