For a project we are doing in Singapore, my company did a wire transfer to a company in Singapore. All of the funds were not expended, and when I asked the Singapore company to wire back the difference, they indicated that they 'preferred' to put the refund on a credit card.

Today I received the credit on my Citibank MasterCard. The conversion rate was what the rate was for that day. On the line below that, I received an additional credit. The credit description was: FOREIGN PURCH*FINANCE CHARGE*ADJUSTMENT which was 3% of the 'refund.' (actually is 2.99978%).

I'm guessing the 3% is the vig that the ripoffs charge to handle your foreign transaction. Has anyone had the experience where it was listed as a finance charge? And I am guessing that Citibank is assuming I originally charged this amount to THAT card and 'refunded' the foreign exchange vig. Hey. I'm not complaining. I made $101.61 ^

Your guess is correct. Citi has been putting the 3% in the finance charges for a couple of years now. I'm not sure what other card issuers put it there.

That guess also sounds correct. Lucky you. Your Singaporean friends probably preferred to do it this way because they would have had to pay a wire transfer fee to wire it back to you, while "refunding" the money to a credit card probably SAVED them money, since it probably reduced the total commissions they had to pay to their merchant account provider by reducing their overall inflows for the accounting period. Technically, however, they probably violated their merchant account agreement, so you shouldn't expect too many others to do this.

Anyone been abroad where the USD is the local currency, and been charged an additional fee? I was in Turks & Caicos (British West Indies), where USD is the local currency, and I feared additional CC fees despite the charge being in USD. Accordingly, I used my Pentagon federal VISA card. According to that CC statement, no additional fees were assessed... but I'm just wondering what the experiences have been.

Interestingly, I did see Discover Card accepted at quite a few places in Turks/Caicos.

Discover Card is great for foreign purchases. I use it extensively in Canada, as you get a straight exchange rate w/ no fees! ^

oh, Discover can be used abroad? I think it is only valid in the US. And no fees too?

Discover can be used abroad, but only in limited places. I've seen it accepted in Canada and Belize. I've heard it's fairly well-accepted in the Caribbean. But I don't think I've ever seen it accepted in Europe, Asia or the Middle East.

thanks for your reply. I wish I was more observant during my last trip to Canada. I falsely assumed that it couldn't be used outside the US, so I never bothered to check the card logos on the door of every merchant I patronized.

Accepted in North America only!
This includes the Carribean and Belize.
No Europe or any other continent.

Last February I charged quite a bit in Aruba, where the *unofficial* currency is the US Dollar. Everything was charged in US dollars. No vig from MasterCard. ^

thanks-- good to know. Hopefully these USD transactions despite being "foreign" will continue to be fee-free.

Just sending this out to say I am finally getting almost exactly 1% like the way it used to be pre-April.

This was for CLP and ARS in the past week.

As stated before, it was nearly 2% in April, then notched down to about 1.2x% and finally their T&Cs and reality match perfectly at 1%. To nitpick though, the majority of pre-April transactions was in the neighborhood of 0.9% from the xe.com quote.

Chao

This is referring to withdrawals against US-based Citi accounts at Citi-owned ATMs abroad, right?

USA Citibank account, does not matter what Cirrus machine you use as the rate is the same in all locations and there is no per use ATM fee charged.

based on this thread and the related wiki, Capital One is the only credit card company that doesn't charge or pass on any foreign transaction fee. However I am very concerned with how Capital One reports a client's credit limit (or lack of), based on this article
http://www.latimes.com/classified/re......-realestate
Is there any alternative out there? Thanks.

I'm not aware of any alternative unless you're willing to pay at least a 1% forex vig. The issue described in the article, however, shouldn't be much of a problem if you pay your balance in full each month. If you plan to carry a balance, then you should be focusing more on the APR than on the forex transaction fees.