How do you know when you're going to be charged a foreign fee?

MeteredOut

B0bbyEwing said:

QrizB said:

B0bbyEwing said:

So ok I get what you guys are saying it doesn't matter the physical location, it depends on what currency the website is selling the product in - be it GBP or EUR. That's fair enough. 

Taking this a step futher, I can sit on my sofa and buy tat from AliExpress (don't judge me). On the AliExpress website I can choose what currency I want to pay in. If I choose GBP I don't risk transaction charges, despite the tat being posted to me fom China.

If I choose EUR or USD (or any of the many other options), it's a foreign-currency transaction and I will incur transaction charges.

But ... the USD price is usually slightly lower than the GBP one, once converted. So I generally choose USD and then pay with one of my cards that doesn't have foreign currency transaction charges.

Interesting. 
More to it than it seems then eh?


Hopefully someone can shed some light on the EUR thing for me as to why we paid for two different things on two different dates, both in EUR but only one resulted in a transaction charge.

Your bank/online statement/banking app might shed some light on this. It will hopefully show the source currency/amount alongside the actual amount charged to your account in GBP. Depending on your bank, you might have to "expand" the transaction to see the details.

MyRealNameToo

B0bbyEwing said:

QrizB said:

B0bbyEwing said:

So ok I get what you guys are saying it doesn't matter the physical location, it depends on what currency the website is selling the product in - be it GBP or EUR. That's fair enough. 

Taking this a step futher, I can sit on my sofa and buy tat from AliExpress (don't judge me). On the AliExpress website I can choose what currency I want to pay in. If I choose GBP I don't risk transaction charges, despite the tat being posted to me fom China.

If I choose EUR or USD (or any of the many other options), it's a foreign-currency transaction and I will incur transaction charges.

But ... the USD price is usually slightly lower than the GBP one, once converted. So I generally choose USD and then pay with one of my cards that doesn't have foreign currency transaction charges.

Interesting. 
More to it than it seems then eh?


Hopefully someone can shed some light on the EUR thing for me as to why we paid for two different things on two different dates, both in EUR but only one resulted in a transaction charge.

Whilst I use HSBC for my company I've never made an international payment using its debit card and also believe the business and personal websites are very different from each other unlike Barclays. 

Certainly with my other banks I can click on a transaction and if it was billed in a foreign currency it will expand out and show what the charge was in the original currency, the FX rate applied and other stuff. Dont know if HSBC allow you to see more details by going into a transaction to see if both were billed in Euro?

Dynamic conversion is certainly an option, some companies will give you the option to settle the bill in your cards normal currency rather than face FX and charges uncertainty. Dont know if Disney offer this?

If you are holiday the POS/Card Machines and ATMs almost always do this and you should almost always say no and just use a FX fee free card instead because the rates are poor. With large businesses doing it then there can be much smaller differences, Amazon.de and Amazon.com which I shop at regularly both give you the choice and were you not to have a fee free card it probably would be cheaper to use the card currency.

Can't say if Disney offers conversion but if it does and you used it on one transaction but not the other then that transaction would only show the GBP billed whereas the other would show the Euro billed and what your bank converted that into GBP

B0bbyEwing

Just had a look in my online statement.

Both transactions were through the app & the app accepts different forms of payment.

The one that billed us a transaction fee looks like a direct payment with the card details. It lists it as 360EUR and shows the Visa rate.

The one that didn't incur a charge is listed as "PayPal Disney All".

So looks like my wife must've paid via PayPal for that one & I guess that you don't get billed a fee when using PayPal, even if you're using a card that would incur a fee when paying direct?

MeteredOut

B0bbyEwing said:

Just had a look in my online statement.

Both transactions were through the app & the app accepts different forms of payment.

The one that billed us a transaction fee looks like a direct payment with the card details. It lists it as 360EUR and shows the Visa rate.

The one that didn't incur a charge is listed as "PayPal Disney All".

So looks like my wife must've paid via PayPal for that one & I guess that you don't get billed a fee when using PayPal, even if you're using a card that would incur a fee when paying direct?

I can't believe PayPay would swallow a currency exchange fee. Log onto paypal and it might show the fee there, or a an exchange rate that reflects the fee.

bagand96

B0bbyEwing said:

So looks like my wife must've paid via PayPal for that one & I guess that you don't get billed a fee when using PayPal, even if you're using a card that would incur a fee when paying direct?

PayPal will do the conversion EUR -> GBP at their own rate (which include a small markup for their trouble).  Your bank see it as a GBP transaction so there's no foreign transaction fee from them.

eskbanker

B0bbyEwing said:

Just had a look in my online statement.

Both transactions were through the app & the app accepts different forms of payment.

The one that billed us a transaction fee looks like a direct payment with the card details. It lists it as 360EUR and shows the Visa rate.

The one that didn't incur a charge is listed as "PayPal Disney All".

So looks like my wife must've paid via PayPal for that one & I guess that you don't get billed a fee when using PayPal, even if you're using a card that would incur a fee when paying direct?

Chances are that PayPal will have handled the currency conversion then, which will presumably have involved a disadvantageous conversion rate if there's no explicit fee stated.

MyRealNameToo

B0bbyEwing said:

Just had a look in my online statement.

Both transactions were through the app & the app accepts different forms of payment.

The one that billed us a transaction fee looks like a direct payment with the card details. It lists it as 360EUR and shows the Visa rate.

The one that didn't incur a charge is listed as "PayPal Disney All".

So looks like my wife must've paid via PayPal for that one & I guess that you don't get billed a fee when using PayPal, even if you're using a card that would incur a fee when paying direct?

And for the PayPal one does it only show a GBP price or a Euro price too?

PayPal will also do currency conversion for you so is likely they converted it to GBP at their rate and then you paid in GBP. 

B0bbyEwing

Thanks for the heads up. I'll have my wife look at her PayPal tomorrow. 

Will put it down as a lesson learned. There's various ways we'd look to be saving money next time round. A few things were pretty extortionate that with better planning/knowledge we could've saved ourselves a bob or two.