Foreign Transaction Fees

Cap One bank card is a painless enterprise, and you can load it electronically from another account with no fees.

ALL FEEs are determined by the card issuer. Therefore there is no way to avoid the 3% currency conversion levied by Citibank if using their card. Pay cash. Cash is king in Europe. Get cash with a no fee debit card from an ATM. On our last two trips we only had a couple of cc charges.

Ally Bank (online) charges 1%. Or try a credit union.

I think I will just open a checking account with USAA. They will probably be my best bet.

Cannot response without hard facts give dates and exchange rates for your charges or withdraws. Have to see them in order to understand what may or may not have occurred. CC companies are not permitted to bury fees in the exchange rate. It has to be disclosed on your statement.

If you have (or can open) an account with Charles Schwab, I just called to verify, there are no International ATM or Transactions fees (well, technically there are, but Charles Schwab and Visa will refund you the fee so in effect you are not paying anything extra). Incidentally the no ATM fee applies to almost all US ATM's too.

If you have (or can open) an account with Charles Schwab, I just called to verify, there are no International ATM or Transactions fees (well, technically there are, but Charles Schwab and Visa will refund you the fee so in effect you are not paying anything extra). Incidentally the no ATM fee applies to almost all US ATM's too. Just to clarify: Schwab no longer offers a VISA credit card. It gave that up. Schwab Bank offers a VISA debit card. That is the one that refunds ATM fees. But a debit card is treated differently and has different levels of legal protection from a credit card, so be careful.

Paul - I asked when I called and was assured I could use the Visa Debit card to pay for purchases and hotels as well as getting cash, this is correct, right?

Be careful using a debit card at a hotel. When you check-in and give them your card, a hold of a few hundred dollars will be placed on the funds in your checking account until you check-out. Unless you have a lot of money in your account, you may encounter some cash flow problems. Same deal with rental cars and debit cards.

Erika -- You can BUT you do not have the same legal protection using a debit card as you would using a credit card. Now -- probability of a debit or credit card being compromised is low BUT if someone gets your debit card they can quickly drain your checking account and then you have no access to cash or anything. Now what do you do? If it is your credit card and they charge a bunch of stuff, you have 30 days to pay it off or to straighten out the mess when you get home. You will eventually straighten out the debit credit problem and get your cash back but it will take awhile before you again have access to your cash. THEREFORE, you best action is to use a debit card for ATM and cash only and a credit card for anything you want to charge. Now we just go almost total cash and rarely charge anything. Just easier.

We went with USAA for checking. Their Debit card charges a flat one percent on ATM transactions, which I consider reasonable. We also signed up for a Captital One credit card and use that as our primary (USAA credit card as backup).

I just opened my USAA accounts and will eventually transfer my balances from my present bank to USAA. Although I presently have free checking and free checks I can see the trend that the "monster mega banks" are headed toward so fees will probably be coming. Plus, as Brad mentioned the USAA debit card has a 1% fee vs 3 % with the one I have now. USAA is definitely worth looking into if qualified. For the credit card and for those who may benefit from it the Capital One Venture card has a promotion going on for a limited time where they will match up to 100,000 miles of your frequent flier miles that you have accumulated elsewhere. My wife has a little over 100,000 skymiles with Delta and they will match that (100,000) plus 10,000 miles provididng she charges $1,000 in the first 90 days of receiving the Venture Capital One visa card. An easy way for us to get 110,000 miles quickly. It cannot be combined with our skymiles of course but the Capital One miles are good for any airline. Also no foreign transaction fees with the Capital one credit card. So if anyone has significant miles already it would be a good way to get some quick miles with the Capital One Visa.