The Church Book - Camping Mexico's Baja
The Mike and Terri Church Book. First let me say it must be a tedious and thankless job to slog through all the details that putting together this book takes. Much of it is very good. But because it i...
Forum Discussion
I have heard this but I am not sure it is a currency exchange fee. Typically and for many many years your best way of changing money has been to use local ATMs. If you use your Credit Card at a store or gas station overseas you may see a very small fee added byt the STORE. this is to cover the cost they are charged for processing the transaction. But this is usually only a few cents. (less than 25).
On my statement it is listed and spelled out as - Card Fee VISA INTERNATIONAL SERVICE ASSESSMENT - it is about 1% which isn't much but adds up if you use it a lot. I mention this so people can check before they run up extra charges. We have to pay it when we do our vehicle deposit at the border but we get the fee back when we get our deposit back. This is a Visa fee. Not a merchant fee or a bank fee. We do not use credit cards in Mexico unless absolutely necessary. Not all cards are alike. And not everyone is a fan of credit cards no matter where we may be.
We use our debit card to get cash at ATM machines located at banks where the best exchange rate can be found. Our debit card is also a Visa issued by the same credit union but there are no fees.
Using a credit card to get cash at an ATM could be considered a cash advance and could result in very high interest rates from the minute you get the money.
Even in the US the warn about cards in gas pumps as crooks are installing skimmers in the pumps. News items appear regularly. They open the pump and install a small device in the pump. News reports show how they open the pump and if the pump has a tape seal the crooks have a phony seal to replace the torn one.
We have a debit card that gives us no fee access almost everywhere to get cash and then we pay with cash. We watch our money.
The point of my post was to caution people to learn from your card issuer what you can and can't do with your card and about any hidden charges. The rules could be very different in a foreign country than they are in the US. Know before you go.
People can use any method of payment they want but I only mean to suggest you do a bit of research before you ASSUME everything will be fine.
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