Bank Scam On Purchases Abroad

EdBrown

I have now heard from Nationwide on this subject, the conversion system is allowed but; quote "I can advise that this must always be agreed with the cardholder". We all know that retailers/restrauteurs etc. are doing this automatically without asking our permission, perhaps because of language difficulties, poor training or worse perhaps the foreign banks are giving them some incentive by way of periodical reward or reduced bank commission on the card transaction.
The only way we can stop it is to complain more and more and ask our card suppliers to pass the complaint to Visa/Mastercard pointing out that the system is failing and customers are not being asked for their consent.

student100

It is probably fair to say that Nationwide are the silly ones here. They are taking the higher cost of processing overseas transactions (Visa charge them more) and they are taking some foreign exchange risk, but they are not passing on these additional costs to their customers.

It's a business decision. The fact that Nationwide don't charge for using their cards overseas is why many customers hold one of their cards in the first place. It is effectively an incentive to attract customers just like cashback or a 0% rate or a free pen or whatever is...

Walletwatch

I agree with both the above posts. There is no exchange risk associated here, for the reason Marky's quoted above, and not passing forward the charges for transactions abroad is a business decision that cannot be termed silly (else anybody providing a 0% credit card would be silly, but that is their way to attract customers)

I think Nationwide don't really care about this particular scenario, as they aren't really affected by it.