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Haha, Americans with their 2-4% transaction tax, it’s so funny. No seriously, when I first moved to the Netherlands I was wondering what kind of backwards coun
by dr_dshiv 3y ago
Haha, Americans with their 2-4% transaction tax, it’s so funny.
No seriously, when I first moved to the Netherlands I was wondering what kind of backwards country wouldn’t let me use a credit card at the grocery store. And that’s when I learned about how crazy it is that credit cards and even American debit cards have such needlessly high transaction fees.
- hhh 3y agoI use an Visa tied to an American bank every day for groceries in NL. I only have ever had issues using a card at a very small record store, I just make sure to carry 100eur in cash just in case. I do have more issues online when something only takes iDEAL though.
- somenameforme 3y agoI'm sure you're aware of this - though others may not be: another trick US banks use is gouging you on exchange rates. My bank was charging something like a 0.5% fee visible fee and then an invisible fee several times that in exchange rate gouging. I found trying to use US banks abroad an absolutely painful experience, to the point I swapped my banking abroad which is itself a huge PITA thanks to FATCA and other stuff making Americans borderline persona non grata at most foreign banks.
- xadhominemx 3y agoBanks all over the world make healthy margins on cross-border transactions involving a currency cross. It is not unique to American banks at all.
- newaccount74 3y agoMy EU bank charges less than 1% currency exchange fee. US banks have charged me 5-8%. It's not the same.
- xadhominemx 3y agoNo way a US bank charged you that amount unless you made the purchase in an esoteric fashion.
- newaccount74 3y agoIt was not a purchase, it was a money transfer. They converted it to EUR for me at really bad rates. It was not an explicit fee.
- xadhominemx 3y agoOk well we are talking about something else entirely -- credit card purchases with an FX cross.
- xadhominemx 3y agoYou get 95% of it back in the form of rewards, so it's not really a tax at all.
- dr_dshiv 3y agoIt seems kind of like a scam, though, credit card rewards. I don’t know enough about it, I generally don’t like participating in those sorts of things. Do you have a ref on the 95%?
- xadhominemx 3y agoIf you don't know anything about it, why would you call it a tax?
- hackstack 3y agoLet’s just take 95% as a true figure … first of all the 5% you don’t get back is a straight up loss. The rewards you get at the end of the month are fine (eg cash back) but you’ve missed out on earning interest on the money you “get back”
- xadhominemx 3y agoCard network fees (the part credit card users don't get back) are about the same for the European payment systems. For card users on net there is essentially no difference. The interest argument of course is nonsense because the opportunity cost ia outweighed ~50x by the interest benefit you receive from the entire purchase going on credit vs just the 2% interchange.