Credit Card Tip to Save 2%-3% on International Travel

I wanted to let you know about a credit card that ends up saving you money when you use it in foreign countries.

I travel occasionally to other countries, so exchange rates to foreign currencies matter to me. It always irked me when credit card companies would add a fee to transactions made in anything other than a US dollar. What irked me was that the umbrella company (Visa, MasterCard) was already adding a fee for the transaction (I believe it's 1%) and they were doing the conversion and then passing the transaction in dollars to the bank/credit card company. To have the credit card company add another fee when the currency exchange had already been processed by Visa or MasterCard was adding insult to injury. It seemed to be a fee for doing nothing.

And it wasn't a cheap fee. Many banks were adding 2%-3% to each transaction (again, this on top of the initial conversion fee by Visa/MC).

And over the last few years it seemed as if more and more credit card issuers were going to this additional fee. But I have found that Capital One credit cards still do not charge any fee/exchange premium on top of what's put there by MasterCard. The base fee by MasterCard is added into the transaction but nothing more. So using this card instead of others means that I automatically spend about 3% less than I would have if I used a different card.

The Capital One cards I've seen carry no fees, so having one available for international travel would cost nothing, and could add up to big savings -- imagine paying 2%-3% less on every hotel transaction, meal and souvenir purchase you made while on that exotic trip to Paris, Rome, Venice...

And they have some credit card types that have reward features, so it's not like you have to sacrifice reward-point-earning to save this way.

So if you have occasion to take a trip to that exotic destination (or some not-exotic but foreign destination) it's probably worth applying for one of the Capital One cards a couple of months before your travels.