[raiyu]

At the moment all of our billing across all of our geographies is done in US dollars, which given the exchange rate of the UK and EU is usually within your favor.

Is there a conversion charge that your credit card company levies on you for paying in US$?

[marcosscriven]

I'm not sure how the dollar price would be in my favour, if you've not specified what the GBP price would be? Sure, once you've set the price it could go either way.

Anyway, as others have said, there are charges and spreads on foreign currency banking. It also adds complications to my otherwise very simple accounting needs.

[Gmo]

AFAIK, every bank (including for instance Paypal) charges a fee for conversion.

At least, it's the case with my French and my Dutch bank.

That's one of the great benefit of the Euro when shopping in the EU (well, except for our British friends :) )

Edit: corrected a typo

[petercooper]

I'm not speaking for Marco, but another issue with dollars is tax accounts (and especially VAT accounts) for British companies have to be in pounds, so there's overhead in doing the conversions, tracking the exchange losses/gains, etc. We also have to reverse charge the VAT on those transactions as well (though I'd be surprised if the majority of business owners know they have to do that).

About 90% of my company's expenses are in dollars, so I've had to become proficient at dealing with it, but I imagine it's more annoying for companies who only make the occasional USD transaction, especially as they may have smalltime accountants unfamiliar with or unwilling to deal with the exchange rate stuff properly.

[corford]

Can't you just use the monthly tables published by HMRC for the exchange rate (IIRC, packages like Xero do this automatically for you?). For the reverse charge, wouldn't that always just balance out i.e. input and output tax are always the same?

[justincormack]

Its not in our favour unless our exchange rate appreciates every month more than our fees. And yes we get charged just like you would if I charged euros to your card.

[jordanthoms]

Most good US cards don't charge an extra fee for non-USD transactions.

[kintamanimatt]

They do, they just hide it in the applied exchange rate.

[vamega]

This is not true. All Mastercard and Visa cards charge a rate that is specified my Mastercard and Visa on a daily basis. I've been tracking this rate for a few months now, and it's consistently been awfully close to the rate I find on xe.com.

The CARD Act of 2009 mandated that credit card issuing companies clearly describe the fees associated with foreign transactions.

Visa/Mastercard charge a cross border origination fee of 0.80%. However many credit cards (all cards by Captial One for example) waive this fee, and do not charge any fee of their on on top of this.

[drtse4]

Regardless of the company, there is always a conversion charge around 2% and the rate applied is never the actual rate, banks usually calculate a rate using some kind of moving average.

[vertex-four]

My bank will charge £1.50 plus a variable commission for paying in anything but GBP.

[kintamanimatt]

Who's that? Halifax? They're great for everything else but non-GBP debit card transactions, and why I moved to HSBC and Co-Operative Bank.

CaxtonFX are also really good for foreign currency cards (2% markup, which is lower than I get with any of my British banks) and have really good customer service too.

[jordanthoms]

Ouch. Seems credit cards out of the US are nowhere near as good, common there to have no foreign transaction fees (apart from probably some margin on the exchange rate).

[fendale]

If you shop around in the UK for a credit card, you will get one with zero fees and an excellent exchange rate on foreign currency transactions.

I use the Halifax Clarity card and I believe The Nationwide and the Post Office do a good card too.

I'd never use a Debit Card for foreign currency transactions though, they always seem to have fees involved.

[Osmium]

> I'd never use a Debit Card for foreign currency transactions though, they always seem to have fees involved.

Nationwide used to have commission-free cash withdrawals on their debit cards abroad, but I think it was abused by people who had second homes in other countries so withdrawn a year or two ago. I believe they still offer a commission-free credit card though.

[bryanlarsen]

My impression was that the banks made a lot more money from the spread than they did from the commission, so I kind of find that surprising. In Canada it's easy to find commission-free cards. The spread is a hidden fee though, so the banks have hiked that up several times.

[gabemart]

The commission-free withdrawals abroad were offered at the wholesale VISA rate. Nationwide didn't take any vig.

Their "Select credit card" still offers EUR and USD purchases with no surcharge and no vig.