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For those of you who travel frequently overseas, you know that foreign transaction fees add up quickly. These fees are usually between 2 to 3 percent of your purchase. Credit card issuers charge this fee for any transaction made in a foreign currency or on purchases that involve a foreign bank.
What many consumers don’t know, is that you might be charged this fee without ever leaving your family room. If you buy merchandise online from a foreign merchant, you could be charged a foreign transaction fee. When I recently noticed a foreign transaction fee on my credit card statement, I tracked it down to a Canadian website that sells used text books. I’d given my credit card to my daughter to order used books for college. In this case, I saved a lot of money on college books.
But if your normal purchasing patterns are costing you a great deal of money—whether it’s due to travel or Internet purchases—you need to start keeping an eye out for a card that has eliminated these fees.
I wrote a blog about the latest on foreign transaction fees three months ago and since then, there have been some small, but positive developments.
Here’s a current list of some credit cards—by issuer—that aren’t charging foreign transaction fees:
Now, I mentioned PenFed, but there are many other credit unions that offer cards that waive the fee entirely. There are also credit unions that charge only the 1 percent fee that Visa and MasterCard charge them for the conversion. If you have access to a credit union in your area, it’s worth checking out the foreign transaction fees on their cards.
Image by bradipo, via Flickr
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