Dynamic Currency Conversion with examples - guide for travellers

Chargeback time

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I get infuriated when a retailer uses DCC without having asked. I generally withdraw cash at an atm and pay by card in restaurants, shops etc. If a restaurant performs DCC without permission I simply donā€™t leave them a tip. I always tell them why - whether this makes any difference to them going forward, goodness knows.

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It would be interesting if the Monzo app would have some currency conversion estimates available (beyond the ā€œĀ„1 = Ā£2.11)

Or at least a little ā€œATM withdrawal calculatorā€.

Ā„400
= Ā£122.67

  • 3% (Ā£3.68)
    = Ā£126.35

Would maybe give a quicker view of ā€œis the cash machine rate better than a 3% feeā€.

I know the answer is probably not butā€¦

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If they DCC without consent, thatā€™s grounds for a chargeback. And the penalities from acquiring banks for that will make them think twice!

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Itā€™s a foreign ATM fee not a foreign currency fee. Can someone from Monzo clarify if GBP withdrawals overseas would be hit with it? Iā€™d expect they would. So itā€™s the 3-15% DCC fee plus the Monzo fee over Ā£200 if Iā€™m right.

I was surprised in Spain that I had no issues with trying to force DCC. Everywhere I went handed me the terminal to enter pin and deal with DCC.

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I came across an interesting DCC situation with a Bank of America ATM today. I needed to withdraw $20 cash - the ATM gave me two options. Either accept their conversion rate (around Ā£1 ~ $1.27) costing me Ā£15.72, or be charged in dollars but with a $3 ATM usage fee. I calculated that $23 worked out at around Ā£17.40 at the mastercard exchange rate. So in this particular case, it seemed to be a better deal to accept the DCC. I guess if the fee is fixed, then if youā€™re withdrawing higher amounts the fee option will eventually become cheaper. Definitely one to watch out for!

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Ooh that is an interesting one indeed. ATM fees are horrifyingly common in America. On the other side though I can think of no reason a typical tourist would need cash in the US.

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Agreed! Iā€™ve managed so far with no cash, I just needed some to get my Turo rental car washed before handing it back :sweat_smile:

A cash only car wash? Even thatā€™s odd!

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Now I feel silly :joy: I hadnā€™t even tried turning up with just my card, I presumed it would be the same as the UK where mainly just cash is accepted. Oops :sweat_smile:

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This is an excellent article :+1:t2:

I just saw your post about Mauritius. Could you pleas share your experience? Does Monzo work in Mauritius and if any what problems have you experienced?

Last update 2019 :pensive:

Yes its fine. Was a while ago though!

Not a recent thing, but seeing this thread come back up brought up one of the worst DCC-related incidents I ever had to deal with. In a ā€œfake marketā€ in China (pretty much what it sounds like), I was taking some exchange students out shopping and in one shop weā€™d bumped into what seemed like a case of forced DCC- the HSBC-issued card terminal would absolutely not let you put a transaction through without DCC if it detected a non-UnionPay (local card network) card. The screen would go ā€œdialingā€ to ā€œrate enquiryā€ to ā€œprocessingā€ to printing the DCC slip, with no choice offered. After some trial and error (since multiple students wanted to shop there), we discovered that the way to process the transaction without DCC was to disconnect the phone line at the ā€œrate enquiryā€ screen (pressing ā€œcancelā€ would just abort the entire transaction), at which point the screen would change to ā€œDCC OPT OUTā€, youā€™d plug the phone line back in, press the green button, and process as normal.

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:clap::clap::clap::clap::clap::clap::clap:

Did they allow you to ā€œtamperedā€ the card reader or was the seller idea?

One of the students came up with the idea, working on the logic that the DCC rate might be obtained from a separate server than the one that processes the transactions, and that if the DCC rate couldnā€™t be obtained, the device would still try to process the transaction without it rather than give up on the sale entirely (and see HSBC lose the interchange). The shopkeeper was definitely shocked when we first tried it, but was willing to allow us to do it after we showed her it didnā€™t damage the card reader.

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