No DCC on prepaid Mastercards

etienneg

I see that Mastercard is stopping the offering of DCC to holders of their prepaid cards, which is a good thing but only a small step. The official reason for doing this is:

"Mastercard says it's made the new rule because customers who opt to pay with a prepaid travel card have already effectively chosen to convert their pounds to the local currency. This means it doesn't make sense for these customers to be given the choice to convert the transaction back into pounds."

In other words, they are presenting this as customer choice.

So, if I write to my CREDIT (or DEBIT) card issuer and say that I NEVER want to be offered the DCC option, I will have explicitly made the same choice. Will they then change my card to one that prevents DCC always?

Or (perhaps more likely in the climate of competitive culture), might some providers of travel credit cards take this up as a way of offering an extra competitive edge over rivals?

Chino

I find the MSE article on this confusing; the headline of the story is "Got a prepaid Mastercard? You won't be offered rip-off currency conversions from this week", suggesting that the new rule applies to all Mastercard-branded prepaid cards.

However, the body of the article states:
"From 12 April, businesses and retailers will no longer be allowed to offer customers paying with prepaid multicurrency cards on the Mastercard network the choice between paying in pounds and the local currency."

Which suggests that the new rule only applies to Mastercard-branded prepaid multicurrency cards and not to all Mastercard-branded prepaid cards.