It’s no fun finding foreign transaction fees on your credit card statement. Use your card for any transaction other than your native currency — even online — and the card will likely charge between 1 and 3% in currency conversion fees.
How bad can it get? 3% of your entire trip? It adds up! MasterCard and Visa were slapped with a class action lawsuit for hiding these fees and have been ordered to pay consumers back. I got a check for over $800.
Now that the dust has settled, several card providers don’t charge any foreign transaction fees. I researched over a dozen cards, looking for one with:
- No foreign transaction fees
- No annual fee
- Double points or better
Candidates included Platinum from American Express and Escape by Discover. In the end we chose Capital One Venture Visa Signature Card . It fits all those criteria and seemed to have a decent rate if we were to carry a balance.
The contract states that the card has no foreign transaction fees:
Double rewards with no annual fee is harder to find these days, so this will be our card of choice while in Europe this Fall.
By the way, we aren’t an affiliate of Capitol One and don’t receive any payment or reward for sending readers to the card.
Happy traveling.
Michael is an entrepreneur, world traveler, and tech geek.