No Foreign Exchange Fee Credit Card - Rogers Bank Platinum MasterCard

This seems to be a bit of a strange topic for an outdoor focused blog, but the reason it is here is that I frequently purchase many of my outdoor equipment online, and the majority of it comes from the US, because it is either lower cost, or more importantly some specialized gear simply cannot be purchased in Canada.  It also is great for traveling.  It’s no secret that the value of the Canadian dollar to the US dollar has been tanking hard recently, and has been for the past several years.  Nowadays I have to do the math to see if I really want to purchase something from the US.  When it was once on par for quite a while with each other, I didn’t really have to think.

In all honesty, I hate Rogers as a company, part of the oligopoly that holds Canadians hostage with their sky high telecommunications costs and lack of customer service to boot.  Likewise, I hate the banks, almost equally an oligopoly, they squeeze every penny out of their customers with service fees and hidden fees to rake in huge profits.

Why am I mentioning Rogers Credit Card – Rogers and a bank, you’d think that would be the worst of all worlds? Paradoxically, Rogers Credit card offers something few others in Canada do.  That thing is no foreign exchange fees.  If you purchase only occasionally in foreign currency, you might not notice how screwed you are being with foreign exchange.  Firstly Visa sets a daily rate, based on the cost of the currency pair the day before.  You can find this out here: https://usa.visa.com/support/consumer/travel-support/exchange-rate-calculator.html/ .  If you look at the real exchange from the day before, you will notice that Visa makes a little money on top of the real exchange.  Then comes the bank that issued your credit card.  Almost all banks charge a further 2.5% on top of the Visa rate, thank you very much for the easy profit!  But this is usually all hidden in one general exchange rate that you see on your card.  So, tyipically, you can pay 5% more just for Visa and then you bank to take turns raping you for exchange fees then conveniently hiding it all in one number.  Well, with the Rogers card, at least you save the 2.5% that your bank would normally charge you.

Now, if you go through Paypal, it’s even a different story. Paypal itself has even more enigmatic exchange fees and they hide it even more.  Suffice it to say, Paypal will screw you over even more if you allow them to change you in your native currency.  By default they will exchange the currency and just charge you in your native currency.  And the fees they collect are even higher.  If you must go through Paypal, I believe there is an option for Paypal to charge your credit card in the original currency, instead of converting it to your native currency.   Do this.

So, the no exchange fees is a good reason to get this card if you purchase many items cross border, or travel a lot.  After doing some research, I found there were only a couple other cards.. namely Amazon.ca card run by Chase Bank, and that’s almost it.  I see many complaints about Chase bank, namely their customer service is horrible and their oldschool paper type of statements, along with the lack of online account management.  Sadly there are not much other options for Canadians for no foreign exchange fee cards.

As a bonus with the Rogers Card, you sort of get 1.75% back on your purchases.  By sort of, I mean it can only go towards Rogers or Fido services/products.  I happen to have a Fido phone, so this works out for me.

Bottom line, to deal with foreign currency exchange and minimize your fees:
- Know what your bank is charging and do the math to estimate how much money you loose in foreign exchange fees
- Get a zero foreign exchange fee credit card if possible.  Rogers Bank card is a good option for this in Canada at this time.
- Always ask for your card to be charged in the native currency of the country you are buying from, so the credit card does the exchange.  This includes PayPal.

This applies whether you are travelling in a foreign country, or ordering things online.

Some Links:

https://www.rogersbank.com/en/

http://www.nomadwallet.com/best-credit-cards-for-travel-abroad/

http://www.greedyrates.ca/blog/travel-tip-avoid-foreign-transaction-fees-canadian-credit-card/

http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-card-foreign-transaction-fees-disappearing-1280.php