MasterCard FX fees increasing; still better than Visa

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Jules New Member

March 28, 2017, 7:24 pm

So I came over here to post the results of the research I’ve been doing lately; and 10 minutes later I’ve spent [URL=’http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2017/03/28/ethiopian-business-class-bangkok-toronto/’]$1500 on this crazy BKK->ADD->YYZ[/URL] deal. Always nice to get sidetracked.. anyway…

As [URL=’http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2016/05/16/mastercard-international-exchange-rate/’]Lucky has previously posted[/URL], MasterCard offers a better FX rate than Visa. So we know this, but I wanted to collect some more data and get a better feel for it – especially as I push a large amount of spend through a Visa and am looking for options to switch it to a MasterCard with similar rewards.

I collected a bunch of data and published it with nice charts here:
[URL]https://fx.sycuse.com/visa-mastercard/[/URL]

Some interesting results came about; firstly that MasterCard does always offers a better FX rate than Visa – as we knew. But the magnitude of the difference has [B]fallen significantly[/B] since November last year.

Visa’s FX spread implies a commission of – [B]on average 0.5%[/B], whilst before November 2016 MasterCard took [B]just 0.02%[/B] (!!). MasterCard have sadly been increasing this since late last year, and it now averages (for AUD/USD) 0.2%. That’s a ten-fold increase; but still much better than Visa.

Let’s see what happens in future.

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MasterCard FX fees increasing; still better than Visa