New fees! Now USAA
 

Just got a change notice from USAA. Tucked away in the brochure is a new MC fee for foreign transactions. Starting July 1, 2006, a fee of 0.8% will be added to any US$ transctions, i.e, no currency conversion needed, made outside of the US. The usual 1% fee for currency conversion charges remains unchanged.
There is no mention of a VISA non-conversion charge though.

It just is unfair to tack on a fee for doing nothing! There are several countries that use US$ as their official currency
The wording infers that the fee is coming from MC. But I thought these fees for non-conversions were all repealed earlier. Are they creeping back? How did the previous VISA fee get repealed?

In this case, I believe USAA is just passing along a fee...

Last August or thereabouts visa announced they would be charging 1% on all foreign currency transactions including those done in US$ (the dcc crowd)...mastercard announced that as of April it would be charging 0.8% on all foreign currency transactions done in USD and 1% on all other foreign currency conversions...I read somewhere recently of a woman in Buffalo playing Bingo in a Canadian Bingo game where she paid in USD and the 0.8% was passed along...she bought a $10 US bingo card which had always been billed for $10 on her US card and this time the charge came through as $10.08 US because of the 0.8% fee....

Visa had put its fee into effect briefly last October but because of the bad publicity it withdrew it (note this is only a 1% fee on dcc transactions, there already was a 1% fee on actual foreign currency transactions)...one would suppose it will not be long before visa institutes or re-institutes this charge or drops it to 0.8% to match mc (who says there is no honor among thieves)...

The important point is that this only effects you if you use dynamic currency conversion...it is not being piled on top of currency conversions in foreign currencies as I understand it.

Hi nibblette, thanks for the information. I guess I will be receiving the notice from USAA any day now.

xyz123,
This will also affect anyone who travels to places that use US$ as their official currency, e,g., Panama, Ecuador, etc. There is no way to avoid the 0.8% fee in these countries.

correct...

it's almost as bad as what is going on some places in euro land...as I understand it and have read here some French banks are imposing currency conversion fees on for example French cardholders using their cards in Italy although both use euro.