PeterL

On Apr 17, 3:25 am, "J. Clarke" <jclarke.use...@cox.net> wrote:
> 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?
>

On border towns the "local" currency is often something in addition to
the local dollar (Peso or CAD). In many cities where large groups of
European tourists congregate (i.e. NYC) many merchants will use the
Euro as the "local" currency.


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> --John
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