Diners Club foreign exchange rates.

[woodyren]

I have a Citibank branded diners club card that came free of charge as a companion card with my Citi Rewards platinum Mastercard.

It has zero forex fee for foreign currency spend and 2 rewards points per dollar on that spend.

I plan to use it while I hold my Citi Mastercard until the second annual fee bonus points arrive next year. We have substantial OS spend between now and then.

I have been attempting to find out how Diners Club calculate their forex conversion rates in order to compare Diners to Visa or Mastercard. Both of which have easily found forex calculators.

I can find nothing and the best Citi can tell me after a few enquiries is that in their T&C's it states " If charges are incurred using a Diners Club card in a currency other than Australian Dollars the amount of the charge will be converted to Australian Dollars at the rate to be determined by Diners Club or it's settlement agency on the date they receive the charge for processing".

Does anyone have a ball park figure on how Diners compare to Visa or Mastercard on these rates? Is it worth using for the extra points rather than say a Visa with very low points or zero points earn?

Thanks.

 

[AIRwin]

Interested to know as well for an upcoming trip overseas...

 

[woodyren]

I have had phone and online conversations with Citi. I have received initial information at first saying they use the rate on Xe.com then i was directed to Citi's buy/sell rates on their website. Since then escalations have told me what I already knew. That neither of the original answers are correct and that Diners Club were also unable to direct me to any on in calculator or similar.

 

[levelnine]

Can't you do a few test purchases online before your trip to work it out yourself? It won't be 100% accurate, but should give you a decent idea of how their spread compares to Visa/MC.

 

[whughes3]

In my experience the DC exchange rates tend to be relatively, poor, to the extent that have not used it much overseas for quite a while.

 

[AIRwin]

In my experience the DC exchange rates tend to be relatively, poor, to the extent that have not used it much overseas for quite a while.

And not widely accepted?

 

[CaptJCool]

In my experience the DC exchange rates tend to be relatively, poor, to the extent that have not used it much overseas for quite a while.

Ditto my experience

you were copping both a poor exchange rate and a 3% foreign exchange fee.

way back in the day (1992) with pound = $3 the overall cost was 10%

What I did on all subsequent trips was to do one SMALL 5 euro transaction and see what conversion rate came of it. (And now with real-time access via online accounts)

I did one airfare one in 2019 I’ll go check and come back with a result.

 

[CaptJCool]

Ditto my experience

you were copping both a poor exchange rate and a 3% foreign exchange fee.

way back in the day (1992) with pound = $3 the overall cost was 10%

What I did on all subsequent trips was to do one SMALL 5 euro transaction and see what conversion rate came of it. (And now with real-time access via online accounts)

I did one airfare one in 2019 I’ll go check and come back with a result.

Following on
Currency conversion added 2.47%

I don’t appear to have been hit with the 3% fee



Diners used .15453

 

[AIRwin]

Following on
Currency conversion added 2.47%

I don’t appear to have been hit with the 3% fee

View attachment 285421

Diners used .15453

Tack!

 

[woodyren]

Thanks. I have read a few anecdotal accounts elsewhere that the forex margins have improved for Diners Club customers in recent years.

I will just bite the bullet with my first few overseas spends and see what it's like compared to my other no fee forex option which is my ANZ Traveler Adventures rewards card. Citi Diners is 2 pts per $ while ANZ is 1.5 then 0.5 after $2k spend.

Will be using both as only some of our hotels accept DC anyway.

 

[Thibault]

I've used the DC a lot in the US and used it yesterday in the UAE.
The charges were very similar to my Macquarie Mastercard for the US.
Will wait until the pending drop for the transactions I made yesterday and will report back.

 

[lowan74]

Having used my Citibank issued Diners card (companion card to a Citi Mastercard) in a number of countries, I have generally found the rate to be approx 1% worse than the rate when using other "FX fee free" cards such as 28 degrees or Commonwealth Bank Gold Mastercard.

Acceptance in USA was almost universal, Canada was a bit hit and miss, China was quite poor. One advantage of the Diners card is that it avoids merchants trying to apply Dynamic Currency Conversion involuntarily (particularly common in China on Mastercards and Visa cards).

 

[ChrisFlyer]

Another data point - I had a USD $283.60 charge on the Diners on 30/7, which still shows as pending at AUD $403.82. However, when it settled on 4/8, it had finalised at AUD $415.20.

(Yes, annoyingly, companion Diners transactions continue to show as pending sometimes for a week after the transaction itself has actually settled. The net result is that when the 'finalised' transaction appears, the pending transaction remains for a little while - and so each transaction basically ends up consuming twice as much of your available credit limit than it should, until the pending transaction clears away - because both the pending charge and the actual charge are subtracted from your 'available credit'. Something to be mindful of particularly with large payments or if you have a low limit.)

Looking at the Visa exchange rate calculator based on the same transaction date (which I find the ANZ Rewards Travel Adventures card mirrors with its 0% foreign fee), the same transaction would have settled at AUD ~$410.48. (So Diners was about 1.14% more expensive on its own 'no fee' card.)

If I'd used the Qantas Premier Platinum Mastercard (which gives 1.5 points/$1 overseas but with a 3% fee), it would have cost AUD $422.70 including the foreign fee. (So about 1.8% more than Diners - a better actual exchange rate, but negated by the impost of the fee.) A 0% fee Mastercard (28 Degrees) would have gotten AUD $410.39.

AMEX doesn't seem to have a rate request tool in the way that the other networks do (and I didn't make a USD transaction on the same day with AMEX), so I can't add that into the comparison - but hopefully the above helps.

EDIT: Oh, another data point with Diners. In the USA (where it's supposed to function just like a Discover card), It seems to work okay in person, including chip and contactless when the terminals support it. But every time I've tried to use it online with a US merchant that accepts Discover but not specifically Diners Club, the websites don't seem to click that it's a Discover card - from the number you type in, it just comes up as not accepted. The only exception I've found with that is Uber, where it works and shows up as a Discover card, even if you use it in Australia (or outside the US - used it with Uber in NZ and it also showed as Discover). I've been able to use the Diners online with US companies that have a specific Diners Club option (recent online USD transactions with Delta and American Airlines were painless as you could select Diners Club specifically, and that worked), but yeah, it's not a perfect setup all around. It's manageable, but you can tell why Diners isn't exactly mainstream.

 

[Thibault]

I've used the DC a lot in the US and used it yesterday in the UAE.
The charges were very similar to my Macquarie Mastercard for the US.
Will wait until the pending drop for the transactions I made yesterday and will report back.

Following up on this :

All the purchases I made in the UAE on my way to Europe and then back were charged to my DC.
They showed up correctly within the app for the first 5 to 7 days and are now completely dropped off. I also got my statement last week and those charges are no-where to be seen.
My balance went up and no purchase records are to be found.

Which sumps up my whole experience with DC via Citi.
This is a great product as a second card but not as a main card.
Great for PayPal in Australia in AUD purchases but that's pretty much it - when it works.

Each large purchases takes twice the available balance spendable on the card for up to two weeks until the charge settle.
Purchased EY ticket with my Diners Club Citi Card - card is not recognized by Etihad so had to use PayPal.
Got 2 entries on my credit card app and the second one dropped 12/15 days after the date of the purchase.
I was unable to use the card before leaving Australia (declined at WLW - was quite embarrassing) as my credit limit is only the minimum, $6k - had to pay back the card in advance to be able to use it overseas.

 

[ChrisFlyer]

You mentioned that the charges weren't on the statement, but did you go to the very last page? The Diners transactions appear on their own statement of sorts, even though it's the same account. In the website PDFs, the Diners statement is usually after the regular Citi statement, but in the same file.

 

[Thibault]

You mentioned that the charges weren't on the statement, but did you go to the very last page? The Diners transactions appear on their own statement of sorts, even though it's the same account. In the website PDFs, the Diners statement is usually after the regular Citi statement, but in the same file.

Correct - I only used my card for my ticket purchase and Woolworths and those are correctly reflected on the DC statement - last page of the PDF.

Ironically I still have all the paper receipts from my UAE purchases with the DC details. So maybe it might be retrospectively added to my next statement. Just very strange I must say!