UK Credit card using less than current Exchange rate for US based purchases

fifeken

Bevereeno78 wrote: »

If they go to the airport today and ask for 1000 US dollars - They pay 674 UK pounds - roughly. If I were to do the same thing abroad via Santander/Mastercard I now know they would be charged ~1350UK P.

Thats wrong. Why do they do this?

You haven't supplied any evidence of this, so as far as readers here are concerned, they don't. Your friends are wrong and you are wrong until any evidence shows otherwise.

Bevereeno78

Ok - see attached. Screen Shot 2017-11-05 at 11.02.06 AM.png

Bevereeno78

24.15USD at Safeway - 0.7734GBP -having a time trying to attach a pic on this site...

Marchitiello

Bevereeno78 wrote: »

24.15USD at Safeway - 0.7734GBP -having a time trying to attach a pic on this site...

And what was the value charged in GBP in your screen shot? £18.68 by any chance?

Bevereeno78

Yes - that is what was charged.

Bevereeno78

At no point has 1USD = 0.7734 GBP. So why has MasterCard used this value to charge?

PeacefulWaters

Bevereeno78 wrote: »

Yes - that is what was charged.

Works out at pretty much a clean exchange rate with a 3% fee added by the credit card issuer.

So what's the problem?

Bevereeno78 wrote: »

At no point has 1USD = 0.7734 GBP. So why has MasterCard used this value to charge?

You're missing the card issuer charging a fee in the region of 3%.

eskbanker

Bevereeno78 wrote: »

At no point has 1USD = 0.7734 GBP. So why has MasterCard used this value to charge?

$1 was between £0.77 and £0.78 pretty much throughout August (https://exchange-rates.org/history/GBP/USD/G/90), exactly when was the transaction your friend is looking at and what do you believe the rate was that day?

fifeken

Bevereeno78 wrote: »

The UK Pound to US dollar has never been 0.7 nor even close.

Bevereeno78 wrote: »

At no point has 1USD = 0.7734 GBP. So why has MasterCard used this value to charge?

See what you're doing? You're mixing up whether it's dollars to pounds or pounds to dollars. One is the inverse of the other.

This was first offered as the cause in post #3.

Marchitiello

Bevereeno78 wrote: »

At no point has 1USD = 0.7734 GBP. So why has MasterCard used this value to charge?

That is different than your previous statement that $1.00 would be charged £1.35, isn’t it?

This is close enough with what everybody has been saying in this thread from the first response. You first thought that Santander was basically applying the conversion the other way around. After finally convincing you to check your evidence, we finally came to the conclusion that they were charged the expected exchange rate plus a forex exchange fee.
The MasterCard exchange rate will never match exactly the interbank exchange rate quoted on the trading reports. The same as they do at the airport .