Credit/Debit Cards and "Foreign" transactions

Posted by: Paul Hutchings on 11 September 2005

Just a word of warning, I noticed today that my bank (Lloyds TSB) now not only charge a percentage of the amount of a foreign transaction, but they also charge £1 per foreign transaction.

This meaning that anything that I buy online that is paid for in a currency other than gbp will cost me a quid more - not the end of the world until you add up all the small transactions like $3 a month for a usenet provider etc.

Thought I'd mention it as other people may not be aware and may get caught out, I'm not sure how long they've been doing it, I do check my bank statements but tend to do a quick scan of largeish amounts rather than scrutinising every quid that shows up.

I think I shall be using my Amex wherever possible from now on!

regards
Paul
Posted on: 12 September 2005 by kevj
Interesting....

By the way, Nationwide's credit card charges no fees or commission on foreign currency transactions.

Kevin
Posted on: 13 September 2005 by Peter Stockwell
one more reason to join the euro, or the dollar if you prefer, in the eurozone they're are no supplements when using the credit card to buy from another country.

Whne I buy from the Us or the Uk I get charged a minimum 0.83€ or 1.75% commisison on top of the exchange rate.

The stupidest thing I've done recently was buy some goods from a shop, then decide I wnated to buy another item, so I asked them to cancel the first transaction and create a new transaction with all the items. very stupid! Because I got hammered with the difference in buy/sell rates. So I ended up paying an extra 10€.