The assertion is that a savvy consumer should use a MasterCard abroad. I have a lot of respect for Gary and Lucky, and love their blogs. The resulting exchange rates are illustrated in the chart below.

XE - Credit Card Charges Calculator

The exchange rate was overwhelmingly stable, which made sense since the dirham was pegged to our dollar. Amex and VISA, which I did not use much, appeared a tiny bit less favorable than MC. The gap between the dotted lines is 0. No explanation was given, but the Asia part was consistent with my observations. I itched to know if there was any truth to the other part.

Foreign Exchange Rates - VISA vs. MasterCard vs. Amex - Hungry for Points

Fortunately, we had an upcoming vacation in Europe. I brought Citi Prestige MC , Chase Hyatt VISA , and Amex SPG Business. Amex was challenging because not every establishment accepted it.

Chase IHG was even harder because it had no chip, rendering it impossible to use in most places. However, I was able to make a minimum of purchases per day using each of Citi Prestige and Chase Hyatt, the main focus of my experiment. I compiled the data as follows.

Exchange Rates | American Express FX International Payments

In Belgium and France, my MC and VISA exchange rates for the Euro aligned quite closely. Lastly, we visited the United Kingdom, where I found the highest spread between MC and VISA. They started out almost identical, but diverted strangely: May be useful to take it one step further to see if the differences are statistically significant, which I doubt.

Our Foreign Currency - Foreign Exchange - American Express

Will try harder next time. A few other currencies HKD, for example will yield the similar result. Those should not be used as a data point, however. Thank you for this thorough piece. USD over the daily WSJ rate even though VISA when I called claims they peg their conversion to the WSJ rate.

They obviously charge the highest rate for the day, if not a little more, according to the numbers I got. Meanwhile, the Mastercard conversion calculator consistently charged the actual WSJ rate, if not the lowest rate of that day at any given minute.

Lesson learned, I will be paying foreign partners with a Citi Mastercard with no foreign transaction fees.

Amex is never accepted. Thanks for the data point.

Were you referring to the WSJ rate as of the transaction date or the post date? I once did some homework on this subject, it seems like Visa will bill you for the exchange rate of the day of the purchase, they take the risk that the rate will change for the worse or perhaps for the better when it finally posts, but for that risk they charge a tiny premium, on the other hand MasterCard will charge the rate of the day of posting, therefore even if you see in your pending charges a amount in USD it might change once it posts, therefore they take less of a risk so their rate might be lower sometimes, but might be higher if the currency you charged goes up.

Thanks for the note, Scot. Your email address will not be published. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email.

Designed by Elegant Themes Powered by WordPress. Strategies Tips and Tricks Select Page. Foreign Exchange Rates — VISA vs. This topic received a lot of attention recently: It was a fairly technical article on how payment networks determined their exchange rates, and looked into some examples of currencies where VISA and MasterCard had an advantage over each other. I set out to collect my own data.

Natalie on June 20, at NoonRadar on June 21, at Thank you for the great data points Peter! Peter on June 21, at 5: Mike on June 25, at 4: I think may be it is not that much statistically significant.

Kat on June 25, at 6: Peter on July 1, at 5: NYdesign on July 25, at 2: Peter on July 25, at 3: Scot Rosenberg on November 7, at 7: Peter on November 7, at 5: Amex — Which payment processor gives you the best rate when… Foreign exchange rates discussion [FOREX]--all cards - Page 25 - FlyerTalk Forums - […] googletag. Submit a Comment Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.

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