Extremely high ATM fees in Portugal w/ Schwab debit card
 

Hi there, I have the Schwab high yield checking account and debit card that everyone recommends for international travel (no minimum balance & reimburses ATM fees worldwide.) I'm currently in Portugal and the ATMs are charging WAY higher fees than I've ever seen in Italy or Greece (12% to 14% of the transaction.)

I'm pretty concerned that these fees are different than what I've encountered in other countries (Italy and Greece,) and I'm wondering if I'm doing something incorrectly. Does anyone know how to just get charged a fixed ATM withdrawal fee like in the United States, and then just get the very low Visa conversion fee or whatever it normal is?

https://wise.com/us/blog/atms-in-portugal
Hope this helps. Lots of detailed info.

Perhaps you are asking for an amount in dollars, then it is being converted to euro. If so, you are being charged a conversion fee. Ask for money only in euro.

The question is, are you letting the ATM convert the money for you? As Sassafras says, this incurs a fee (but not as high as 12 - 14%.)

Always decline the "favor" of converting into dollars and choose the Euro option.

Usually there is a fee that is added by the issuing bank which you will agree to (like three or four euros) but Schwab refunds those fees at the end of the month. At least they do it on my account.

Sounds like you are a victim of DCC. If an ATM asks if you want the amount settled in $ or the local currency, always select the local currency. If you choose $ you will get a fixed rate, but it will be much higher than the rate that your own bank charges. Do a Google for “Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC)” to get an explanation of how it works.

Also avoid drawing money from blue & yellow Euronet ATMs, which are privately operated and charge a higher withdrawal fee.

if you have a Visa debit card you can look up the conversion rate each day on:
https://usa.visa.com/support/consume...alculator.html

MasterCard has a similar website.

Thanks Sassafras, that is a good article, and it sounds like I should've attempted to find large banks like Deutsch if possible.

For anyone else finding this thread, the comments attached to this article (https :// www .portugalist. com /portugal-atms-guide /) seem like they may have the answer for those who cannot find the larger banks. I'll try to summarize my understanding in hopes of helping others avoid the ridiculous ATM fees I've been encountering. Still, I would recommend reading the comments on that article to gain a more thorough understanding.

If you go up to a Portuguese ATM and put in your card, you're going to be offered an absolutely horrendous rate (13.00% or so.) It will ask if you want to accept this rate. YOU MUST SAY 'NO' or select the option to REJECT the rate. It will likely show you a second screen that has some confusing information saying you've declined the rate and threatening you with an "unknown" rate or something like that. It again will be offering you the absurdly terrible rate that you saw originally. You need to say NO again (or reject their rate) -- read carefully because they're trying to trick you into clicking the button that will approve them to charge you your rate.

On one of these screens you should see the option to REJECT their scam rate and instead be charged the "unknown" rate. That unknown rate should be the market rate for exchanges, and will be MUCH more favorable.

To be clear, you'll still be charged the ATM charge (probably something like 4€ to 8€ if I had to guess) which is why you should use a card that refunds those fees worldwide, but the exchange rate will be much, much better.

Frankly I'm pretty appalled that the banking laws in Portugal allow for this dubious behavior. I've taken money out of sketchy looking ATMs in about 5 different countries, and at larger ATMs directly across from some of the largest tourist traps in Europe. Never before have I experienced such an abusive, and misleading process as I've encountered at every single ATM I've visited in Portugal. I hope that this type of abuse comes under legislative review at some point.

For the record, I've tried ATMs in multiple cities here, and and most recently sought out Multibanco ones located inside the doors of a bank. The result has been the same everywhere.

No it isn't the DCC from what I can tell. I'm well aware of that one and have been able to navigate it easily in other countries. This appears to be something different. Either that or it is the DCC fee and they've used MUCH more deceptive language and screens than what I've encountered before.

Something is going on, because Visa or MasterCard will charge what they show on the website when you add the bank fee %. Some ATMs use deceptive language, so you need to read carefully what appears on the screen. Some privately operated ATMs where I live try to sting you for charges, but thankfully British banks don’t have ATM withdrawal fees.

I have cards from both the US and UK, but hardly ever withdraw cash in the UK these days. I pay nearly everything by credit card, and my US bank has no foreign transaction fees, plus a 1.5% cash back on credit card charges. Since I always pay the balance each month, there are no interest charges either, so for me using a credit card is a no-brainer. Most merchants in the UK are happy to take cards for even small transactions, but that may not be true of Portugal.

Also avoid drawing money from blue & yellow Euronet ATMs, which are privately operated and charge a higher withdrawal fee.

I mistakenly took the bait and used one of these in Portugal in April. Fortunately, I used my Schwab card and was refunded the fee.

I use these all the time and the withdrawal rate is not that much worse than bank ATMs.

Banks are robbers. Unfortunately it is not just Portugal where these DCC rip-offs are going on.

In the past year, I'm beginning to be offered the DCC rate at ATMs in Italy, which I always decline. But when I've checked, it's not much different from the bank rate.

I encountered similar high fees, depending on the bank, not in Portugal but in France CDG and in Prague. From my trip reports:

The first thing we did after passport control and baggage retrieval was to get cash. Some service providers still appreciate cash over credit cards, in some instances credit cards are not accepted. Where you take out euros makes a difference, at times a big difference. The Euronet ATM machines charged me 13% to give me a receipt in dollars; I still get charged a 1% transaction fee by VISA. So we paid $364 instead of $321 (that day’s averaged rate). The statement printed on the receipt says that I chose that option as if another option were available; but my impression is that the only other option was to cancel the transaction.

I refuse to use free standing ATMs in the belief that they charge high fees for the withdrawal of cash even when asking for a receipt in the local currency. Our first withdrawal was with a Unicredit Bank which, they told us after we used their ATM, is not a bank but an investment firm and their ATM charged us 5% for the transaction. The Komercni Banka gives cash withdrawals with no fee, at least when the ATM attached to the bank building. When we left Prague we had requested at the hotel a cab that accepts credit cards. It was 7 a.m. when we left, and the cab did not accept credit cards. He stopped at a bank on the way out, a distance from the center of town, at an ATM , and this one charged us a whopping 18% fee on the withdrawal; the bank’s name is Česká spořitelna.

In case someone is wondering, I always refuse the DCC rate. I wonder if this wild variation in fees has developed recently. I recall variations in fees in Spain depending on the bank pre-pandemic, but usually between 3% and 5%.

Perhaps things have changed significantly during the pandemic, but I never recall these scams being so problematic. It used to be that if you had the Schwab card you'd just choose the amount you wanted, be charged a pretty small exchange rate, and Schwab would pickup the 5€ or so ATM fee. Seems like maybe it's back to having to really hunt for ways to avoid fees? Seems like a lot of steps backwards from where we were was travelers.... Pretty disheartening.

Has anyone tried using a euro based card in one of these machines? Do they get charged the same?
It could just be that Portuguese banks charge for ATM withdrawals no matter what.

Banks are businesses, like any other, they are no better and no worse than any other. Their aim is to make money, and I sometimes wonder how US banks do that with no fees, refunding fees, cashbacks, airline points etc etc. I guess we idiots in Europe are supporting a lot of that with our credit cards which don't offer such things and do charge an annual fee. Our banks also charge us for our accounts, pay miserable or negative interest rates, and often charge for ATM withdrawals.

I have always used the same Credit Union debit card and was always given the average daily exchange rate and charged 1% by Visa for the conversion. Depending on the bank and the country, that should still be possible. But I am excluding the possibility that the card holder's bank adds its own fee similar to the fee charged if one does not use the bank's ATM in the U.S.

That's a very gracious view of banks! One which I'm not sure a lot of people share....

Regardless, if Portugal treated their own citizens with these sorts of fees, you'd almost certainly had a disruptor enter and take over the market by now, forcing out these duplicitous business practices. Since that clearly hasn't occurred, I'd tend to assume that this is a targeting of foreign visitors; something I tend to believe should be spotlighted.

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I believe that European banks may charge a fee for an ATM withdrawal as long as that fee is also charged to its own customers.

I just got back from Italy and was offered DCC at an ATM--somewhere--can't remember where. The wording was different than whenever I've seen it before, so much so that I almost clicked "Yes." I may have encountered it one other time on this trip, can't remember which bank. I generally use credit cards, but like to have cash for taxis and other random purchases.

We ran into a few issues with ATMS in Switzerland last fall - we've been visiting for years, but this was new.

From my trip report:

The day we arrived, Bill encountered an ATM in the airport with a 4% surcharge. Say what? So he tried again at a different ATM in the Zurich train station, same thing. Then he tried again when we arrived in Grenchen, same thing. What the heck was going on? When it happened again at a fourth ATM (all different ‘brands’ mind you, bank, Post Finance, SBB, Credit Suisse), he went ahead with the withdrawal, still baffled, but thinking that Schwab might reimburse the charge, as they do with other ATM surcharges. But then we noticed the 4% did not show up as a separate charge, so Schwab couldn’t even see it; it was bundled in with the cash withdrawal.

This had never happened to us on our many visits to Switzerland; ATMs and credit cards have always had very similar exchange rates. But this time, at least on that first withdrawal, that upcharge led to a crap exchange rate, $1.08 for the credit card vs $1.14 for cash.

I posted this on TA and it was suggested we’d been the victims of DCC. I resisted, as we consider ourselves well versed in the DCC scam. This felt different.

Until…we both scoured the screen during an ATM transaction later in the trip, and there it was, a tiny box tucked away at the very bottom of the screen giving the option in CHF, the default option was USD. Sneaky. Sure enough, we had been DCC’d.

Note that this was not the case with every ATM. Some used CHF as the default option, which is what we'd come to expect in Switzerland. DCC is not new of course, but this appears to be a new technique in Switzerland to upcharge those using foreign debit cards.

This is a really informative thread, seemingly applicable to many places in Europe. Probably good to point out to new travelers and people who have not traveled in awhile. I don’t usually worry about a few dollars her and there, but this can be quite a lot if you need to pay for something big in cash.