limestone Posted April 13, 2006 Posted April 13, 2006 Anyway, for the curious, check this out: Here's the exchange rate for the past week from www.gocurrency.com: And based on the exchange rate on 3rd april, check out the exchange rate that the bank charged me on 3rd/4th April: US$ on the left, S$ on the right... and it works out to a whooping 1.647 :o , despite www.gocurrency.com posting the exchange rate of about 1.617 on 3rd April... That's how much the banks make money from us... >:(
tsammyc Posted April 13, 2006 Posted April 13, 2006 American Express generally provides the best rates. Local banks will fleece you. I just acquired this new DBS Amex Card which will give me a free flight to New York, worth a few $K, just for charging an MO like this to it.
dbchoong Posted April 13, 2006 Posted April 13, 2006 You can call your credit card bank for the exchange rate used without waiting for the bill. This will help the MO organiser calculate the charges ahead of time. Typically, the banks charge a little bit higher than the current exchange rates. The last MO I did, the market exchange rate was about 1.62 and the bank charged me around 1.64. ;D
manik_saha Posted April 13, 2006 Posted April 13, 2006 Note that the exchange is take on the date the merchant claims the amount, which may be different from the transaction date.
hplanet Posted April 13, 2006 Posted April 13, 2006 credit card bank and the local current rate are differents.... Usually banks want to earn your cards $$ also right?
Quest88 Posted April 14, 2006 Posted April 14, 2006 Credit card exchange rates happen on 2 levels: 1) Network exchange rate - e.g. Visa, MasterCard, etc. These usually charge 1% more on-top of the publicised rates. 2) Expect to pay a certain percentage ontop of that rate. Banks like DBS and Citibank are notorious for high mark-up here of maybe 2%+. Of course, usually these banks tend to give better benefits - e.g. more points for overseas spend. So for MO organisers, best to stick to those with good exchange rate, e.g. Amex like tsammyc mentioned. Also, just as manik has mentioned, exchange rate is based on posting date and not transaction date. This episode happened during my SVS MO when order was delayed a few weeks and exchange rate went up! Unfortunately, it is against merchant policy to claim the amount before items have shipped, so can't prevent this issue all the time. Best if you can confirm the availability of all items before ordering if this is the case, although sometimes cannot be helped (SVS wrongly informed me then and was missing a single casing).
bhuv Posted April 14, 2006 Posted April 14, 2006 In the SVS MO organised by me, commission charged was around 1.5%. However, I think that it is futile to attempt to get the best rate. Firstly, credit card companies would not reduce their rates (i called Amex and Visa to find out whether there is any way I can get lower rate). Secondly, we can not predict how the rates are heading. Say if you place your order on 1st May and SVS gives you two options - they will charge your credit card on 1st May itself or on 15th May when they are shipping. Unless you have a crystal ball or are the best forex trader around, you will not know whether the rates are better on 1st or on 15th. and in both cases (ie crystal ball or best forex trader) you are better of making more money elsewhere than to save couple of basis points on exchange rate of an MO
Quest88 Posted April 14, 2006 Posted April 14, 2006 Actually my point wasn't on how to get a better rate. Was more like how to try to set the present known rate so the final amount is more predictable. :) Unfortunately SVS didn't allow me to charge earlier (1st May in your example).
bhuv Posted April 14, 2006 Posted April 14, 2006 Quest, completely agree with you. that was the most troublesome part for me in the MO
koma Posted April 14, 2006 Posted April 14, 2006 BUT....... u n limestone did a great job!~~!! ;) Cheers Koma Quest, completely agree with you. that was the most troublesome part for me in the MO
UpGuy Posted April 14, 2006 Posted April 14, 2006 i use uob card for online transactions in us sites... so far the exchange rate charge has been quite reasonable... will keep in mind not to use the abovementioned cards due to the higher interest rate. thanks for the tips.
limestone Posted April 17, 2006 Author Posted April 17, 2006 i use uob card for online transactions in us sites... so far the exchange rate charge has been quite reasonable... will keep in mind not to use the abovementioned cards due to the higher interest rate. thanks for the tips. Upguy, just for your info, that my example above was a UOB Credit Card transaction.. :P
manik_saha Posted April 18, 2006 Posted April 18, 2006 Rate seems to be going lower.. today lowest in last 8 years. :)
manik_saha Posted April 19, 2006 Posted April 19, 2006 Noticed that the link I used in the image gets updated every day .. cool :D
limestone Posted April 19, 2006 Author Posted April 19, 2006 Hey Manik... useful link! ;D But not very relevant to what we're talking about here though... :)
DIRTRUN Posted April 19, 2006 Posted April 19, 2006 He he he, Afterwards people will be asking how come exch rate only 1.64 but limestone calculated at 1.65... More 'administrative' fee ala.... No offence huh... Cheers Dirtrun
limestone Posted April 19, 2006 Author Posted April 19, 2006 He he he, Afterwards people will be asking how come exch rate only 1.64 but limestone calculated at 1.65... More 'administrative' fee ala.... No offence huh... Cheers Dirtrun It's ok, this thread has enough solid proof to back me up. ;)
Quest88 Posted April 19, 2006 Posted April 19, 2006 Today the US$ first time trading under 1.6 since 1998! US$ going to continue to plunge!
Guest Zoomer Posted May 21, 2006 Posted May 21, 2006 I have emailed many banks and visa international about this cos I order stuff from US frequently. Let me explain it here for the benefit of everyone. US$ Purchase USD Converted to SGD with Visa's Rate + Visa Admin fee of 1% Banks may then charge a further % on this. Charges by banks: DBS: 1.5% - Highest! Citibank: 1% UOB: 0.6% HSBC: 0.55% UOB - "We also wish to highlight to you that regardless of the card issuer, be it MasterCard, Visa or JCB, the foreign exchange conversion rate set is based on the Visa International rate." Not sure why that is so, but yeah okay. Needed to push them a bit to get this info (the % of admin charge) out though. Not sure why they would hide it since it's one of the lowest in the market. By the way, for foreign currencies other than USD, eg HKD: HKD -> USD -> SGD That's why the rate really sucks if you use any other currency.
Quest88 Posted May 21, 2006 Posted May 21, 2006 That's only for UOB I think. Almost all other banks have a direct conversion from the respective currency to SGD. Visa/MC control the rates as they do the settlement between acquiring and issuing bank. I don't think UOB is one of the lowest btw. Common sentiment is still Amex. Still have other banks: ABN Amro, Maybank, OCBC, Amex.
limestone Posted May 22, 2006 Author Posted May 22, 2006 I dunno about the markup that banks use la, but this is what I found in my recent trip to Genting: Money-changer rate for cash: 2.27 Citibank (mastercard) transaction exchange rate: 2.25 UOB Visa Gold transaction exchange rate: 2.23 :o :o :o Why oh why?
Guest Zoomer Posted May 22, 2006 Posted May 22, 2006 That's only for UOB I think. Almost all other banks have a direct conversion from the respective currency to SGD. Visa/MC control the rates as they do the settlement between acquiring and issuing bank. I don't think UOB is one of the lowest btw. Common sentiment is still Amex. Still have other banks: ABN Amro, Maybank, OCBC, Amex. Not trying to raise a big hoo ha, but from an earlier email by UOB: "Foreign transactions are converted to United States Dollars on the transaction date. Once processed, the transaction would be converted to Singapore Dollar on the posting date of the transaction. This process applies to all credit cards issued with Visa/MasterCard International."
limestone Posted May 23, 2006 Author Posted May 23, 2006 Yes, regarding the Visa/Mastercard 1% admin charge and the bank's charge, it's true.. Based on the my current SVS M.O, I've been slapped with a ~2% admin charge on my bill from SVS in USA.
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