Currency conversion on Bankwest Qantas credit card

[ZigZagWanderer]

With possibly one or two exceptions, when you use a Mastercard or Visa for a foreign currency transaction, it is Visa or Mastercard that do the actual conversions. The banks then add a disclosed fee on top of the converted amount.

There is fairly good disclosure these days about what is happening. On 23/12 Visa quoted that their markup on EUR to AUD was 0.7%.

I have found a foreign conversion fee free Visa or Mastercard to be about as good as it gets in most situations.

Just checking an historical payment, it was 1.4% over the spot rate for that day. I doubt it swings that much. Normally it's less than 1% in a day. It could be about 0.7% + some swing, but I'll bet that if I select a few of these, the average won't be 0.7% over spot. I think mastercard is squeezing more now, but not as much as the 3% I imagined.

Of course, Commbank took their pound of flesh at 3% too.

 

[ChrisFlyer]

It can also depend on the currency, as Visa and MC may have different currencies where they'll convert directly to AUD, and others where in the background, they'll first convert the amount to USD and then to AUD (but it's invisible to the purchaser - they just see the original currency and AUD). I think EUR would be a direct conversion for both cards, though.