J. Clarke

SMS wrote:
> Hatunen wrote:
>
>> How does one make a foreign transaction in the US while in the
>> US?
>
> The link to the Washington Post article explains it. It's called
> "Dynamic Currency Conversion." The merchant's point of sale terminal
> does the conversion from local currency to dollars, and you're given
> a
> receipt that indicates the purchase total in $US. It's only when you
> compute the exchange rate (if you even remember the price in local
> currency) that you realize that you've been charged an exchange rate
> that's about 4% worse than the true exchange rate. In the case of
> DCC,
> Visa wasn't getting their 1% because there was no currency
> conversion
> being done by them, it was all done by an intermediary between the
> merchant and Visa. Needless to say Visa wasn't happy about losing
> their 1%, and they are now changing the terms to charge 1% based on
> the merchant's physical location, rather than charging 1% based on
> converting the purchase from foreign currency to $US. I suppose this
> also means that charges in countries that use the US dollar as their
> own currency will now have the 1% fee as well, even though no
> currency
> conversion is taking place.

That's all well and good, but where in the US is the "local currency"
something other than US dollars?

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--John
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(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)