I have just finished comparing Mastercard and ATM exchange rates against official closing rates in Europe to see how well they followed their stated practices during our July trip. <BR> <BR>Mastercard: .46% to 3.50% with average at 1.04%. The 2.8%,3.5% happened on the day dollar was slipping fast. This seem to indicate MC charges 1% as stated in their guide. <BR> <BR>Visa: We did not use it because they clearly stated there would be 2% additional charge for foreign currency charges. <BR> <BR>ATM (Cirrus network): .55% to 1.44% with average right on 1%. This seems to indicate Cirrus charges about 1%. <BR> <BR>ATM (Plus network): 1.14% to 1.85% with average at 1.54%. Lack of less than 1% day was puzzling.

Hi Greg, <BR>I'm a little confused by the info. Are the percentages what they charged you above the Interbank rate? how did you calculate this? Also, on the ATM's, I was under the impression that exchange rate would be set by your bank and have nothing to do with which network you withdrew on. I'm not aware of Cirrus or Plus actually collecting any fees direct from the customer. Am I missing something here? And finally, who was the issuing bank on your Mastercard? The current deal is that Mastercard usually adds a 1% fee, but the issuing banks are now adding a fee, most notably Citibank. Citibank is one of the top (maybe number 1?) issuers of MC and now adds that 2% onto foreign currency transactions. I take it your MC bank did not.

I'm with Beth, I don't understand that info at all, either, or what the percents are supposed to be--I don't think you can really figure that out exactly because you don't really know the bank exchange rate they used, you're just making educated guesses. The only real way to know is to do both transactions (credit card & ATM) on same day. But, my comment on previous post is that my understanding is contrary re fees -- ie, I think that whomever owns the ATM does indeed decide whatever fee they want to charge; the ATMs aren't owned by Cirrus or Plus, I don't think, they're owned by local banks (every ATM I've ever used has a bank logo on it) who have agreements with the Cirrus/Plus or other networks to use them, but whoever owns the ATM you use decides the fee. On top of that, your own bank (if they aren't the ATM you use) can add their fee for you using another ATM, also. So, with ATMs you get 1-2 fees taken out (your bank and the ATM owner), but the I thought the exchange rate was the bank rate, maybe I'm wrong on that--however, Greg may be attributing something to rate differences that are his or the ATM owner's flat fees per transaction; on my bank statement you cannot tell them apart, they are added together. Anyway, I really don't think it's worth worrying about fractions of percents differences in such rates--for me, you'd have to have differences of at least 3 pct, probably more like 5, to matter. <BR>

I agree with the two responses above. Our ATM company indicated that there is generally a fee charged at the point of withdrawal. Itis up to the issuing bank of the ATM to decide if they too will charge an additional fee. Our Visa bank does not charge a fee only the exchange rate that is in effect at the time the charge is processed. Check with your banks, regardless if the card is Visa or Master Card.

The oanda site (www.oanda.com) gives the daily interbank exchange rates (max, min and average). My cc statement only shows the value in US$ of any particular transaction. All I may therefore check is the effective exchange rate I got on a particular transaction against the min interbank rate (at best - i.e., lower percentage charged) or max interbank rate (at worst). It also puzzles me which data is available to enable one to break things down. <BR> <BR>Paulo <BR> <BR>

The oanda site (www.oanda.com) gives the daily interbank exchange rates (max, min and average). My cc statement only shows the value in US$ of any particular transaction. All I may therefore check is the effective exchange rate I got on a particular transaction against the min interbank rate (at best - i.e., lower percentage charged) or max interbank rate (at worst). It also puzzles me how you were able to break things down. <BR> <BR>Paulo <BR> <BR>