yo

I've heard horror stories of the percentages that credit card companies charge you just for going overseas and using their card. I plan on going out of the country (to Europe) for like a month this year, does anyone have suggestions on which card has a low fee?

I looked into the Diner's Club International (no international fee), but that costs 95 bucks a year! Don't know if I'll be saving that much by using their card.

TIA

ramazank2

American express has the lowest fee I think it is 2%. When I traveled there I called up all my banks and found their partner banks in Europe that allow you to withdraw cash at no cost.

Merlin

My HSBC card has a 1% fee

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cheapchinese

if you have a citibank account, withdrawing from any citibank atms are no charge where ever you are....

kgsilvas

Jeepers. I'm not much of a world traveler, so I didn't even realize that there were international fees. Guess I skimmed over that stuff in the stinkin cc agreement.

Here's a link to a USAToday article from 4/05 that compares some major US credit cards' international fees and policies. More than half of them do not charge the fee if the transaction is made in U.S. dollars.

Did you get your flight to France after all?

Butch

The fees suck . . . until I got a Euro-denominated bank account and credit card out here, I was paying out the ass for fees.

If I needed to buy something on cc here, I needed to put it on my US card (fee), then I couldn't pay my card until I took my Euro salary and transferred it to my US bank account (fee) . . .

I use Citibank in both the US and Germany, and it is pretty decent but if I remember correctly, they do still charge you a transaction fee for using ATMs abroad . . . I think when I used my Citibank US bank card out here on a Citibank DE ATM, I was charged by Citi US . . . no charge from the DE branch, though . . .

My memory may not be 100% accurate on the charge account, though . . .

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I used to be into sadism, necrophilia and beastiality, but then I realized I was just beating a dead horse

yo

Yeah I got my flight to France. I was debating on getting a card or just carrying cash. I doubt I'll buy something very expensive over there, but just in case of emergencies.

Thanks for all the suggestions! I have an AMEX card and it seems decent enough although I heard that many countries don't accept that card much. So I was looking into some Visa or MC.

cheapchinese

too bad you are not in taiwan... most card distributed there, don't have international fee