MSE News: Mastercard vs Visa for using abroad – which wins?

"Note: we haven't included American Express in this comparison, as while a quick survey showed its rates are comparable with Mastercard's and Visa's, its cards have a 2.99% non-sterling transaction fee."

My Lloyds American Express doesn't have a non-sterling transaction fee.

This is an excellent article. Another matter that the article doesn't cover is that that card holders are often given the opposite side of the price, i.e. the bid instead of the offer or the offer instead of the bid. This is because the card networks (MasterCard, Visa, Amex) only trade net amounts in the FX markets, i.e. the net flow of aggregate bought and sold amounts in a particular currency pair. On the same card network and same day, if for example more money is spent by US-based card holders in the UK than is spent by UK-based card holders in the US, then the card network will buy a net amount of GBP/USD on the offer price. This means that UK-based card holders, who are selling GBP/USD, are given the offer price instead of the bid price, i.e. a much better GBP/USD rate than the interbank rate. I have first-hand experience of this with MasterCard, but not Visa and I never use my Amex cards for cross-currency transactions.

For those who don't understand the terminology:

• The bid is the price at which a price maker buys and at which a price taker sells. It is the lower price.
• The offer (sometimes also called the "ask" price) is the price at which a price maker sells and at which a price taker buys. It is the higher price.
• In FX trading, when referring to buying or selling, one always refers to what one is doing with the first currency of a currency pair (e.g. GBP in the above example of GBP/USD).

MSE_Helen_Saxon wrote: »

Callum - that's a fair point, and we do have the Lloyds Avios cards in the travel credit cards guide as decent cards for spending overseas - though the fee must be taken into account, which is why I didn't include them in the table in the story.

I've adapted the note to reference Amex issued cards only.

It needs to be taken account in order to fit in the table, but not to be mentioned in the article.

Even ignoring the free upgrade voucher - which is the reason I personally got the card (I already have 3 other fee-free cards) - the Avios earnt on my foreign spending this year will more than cover the fee (at a value of 1p per avios (though in practise I tend to get more value than that) you're ahead once you've spent £1920 abroad). I don't see why you'd deliberately exclude this as an option?

Well done to MSE for spotting this, assuming it is a real difference. And well done to zagfles for spotting it previously.

As zagfles points out, at least part of the explanation seems to be that Visa has a much bigger margin between the bid and offer rates (the difference between the rate they use when buying a currency vs selling it). I guess this means that Mastercard would also be cheaper for foreigners coming to the UK.