When travelling, and offered the opportunity to pay in your own currency, think twice, it’s a big bank scam. The scam is Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC).
With all the bank advertising, you will not see this story in mainstream media. The beauty of this international bank scam is that our banks rip off foreign tourists and the banks of overseas tourists rip off our tourists. Just ask your bank! It is the perfect crime. And when we say “crime” we mean fraud. “Fraud” means gaining a financial advantage by deception … exactly what this scam is.
At a hotel, a shop or a restaurant, when they put the machine in front of you and offer you the choice of paying in foreign currency or your own currency, which option do you select?
If you take the intuitive decision and pay in your own currency – the idea being that you won’t get charged a currency conversion fee – you will get pinged with a DCC charge or 3 per cent to 8 per cent on the transaction. The fee depends on the deal done with the merchant, that is the hotel or the restaurant.
When offered the choice, it is counter-intuitive to choose the option to pay in foreign currency. Card industry insiders say up to 90 per cent of people choose to pay in the currency of their country of origin, the idea being that if they are Australian and choose to pay in, for instance, Thai Baht, US dollars or euros, they may well be stung for another currency conversion fee on top of the normal forex fee.
For the banks, the beauty of DCC is that the fee is not adequately disclosed, arguably not disclosed at all, and so they make billions worldwide from unsuspecting travellers. Further, it is our banks that prey on foreigners and foreign banks that prey on Aussies abroad. Each therefore can place hand on heart and claim they are not ripping off their own customers.
Here is a story in the UK, run off the back of our coverage of DCC and here is our original coverage:
Banks ‘plunder’ travellers with forex fees on credit card transactions
And here is another one:
Michael West established Michael West Media in 2016 to focus on journalism of high public interest, particularly the rising power of corporations over democracy. West was formerly a journalist and editor with Fairfax newspapers, a columnist for News Corp and even, once, a stockbroker.