anyone holding citibank? i called up, their said no service/admin charge

Thanks for the info. One thing for sure is that Alliance MC rate is lower than Alliance Visa.

Card Transactions in Foreign Currencies

Card Transactions in foreign currencies other than US Dollars will be converted into US Dollars before being converted into Singapore Dollars. Card Transactions in US Dollars shall be converted to Singapore Dollars on the date of conversion. All conversions are subject to such exchange rate at such time as may be determined by the respective card association(s), namely Visa International Service Association and/or MasterCard International Incorporated at its absolute discretion. The conversion rate applied is based on the Posting Date of the Card Transaction to the Card Account which may be different to the rate in effect on the date of the Card Transaction. The Bank shall charge the Cardmember the converted amount, an administrative fee of 1.5% of the said amount (or such fee as the Bank may determine from time to time), and any charge levied by the card associations. The Bank may charge, credit and debit, as may be appropriate, all sums payable to the Bank under this Agreement to the Card Account.

I wonder if MBB MC is lower than MBB Visa or not? I think on your blog last time you compared before and it was nearly the same right?

Oh, then my analysis is wrong already since I based it on transaction date.

Do you still have the AMEX Gold credit card statement ? The one that was the hottest AMEX before the introduction of this MBB2 product. If i'm not mistaken, the information was given by someone using the pure AMEX Gold credit card. I did refer back to my mom's canceled AMEX charge card statement from year 2009 and the was no mention of this 0.5% admin charge either, just the 2.5% from AMEX.

Anyway, one thing for sure is that for all AMEX credit card bearing the Maybankard logo, the total admin fee is 3% (0.5% + 2.5%).
All the banks seem to charge more than what's stated in the back of the statement (foreign currency admin fee).

BUT, here is the shocking thing, behind my separate MBB VI, it states the following:

"Foreign charges applies a conversion factor of 2.5% to the converted amount and charges that is made in a foreign currency other than US Dollars will be first converted into US Dollars before being converted into Ringgit Malaysia" WTF     

No wonder the MBB VI earns us 5X TP overseas.

Exchange should be as of posting date which is when the bank remits the money to the merchant. Thus the term "posted".

Here is my table when using the exchange rate on the posting date. Again, the card is a MBB MC so I took the rate from MC's website.



Strangely, the Mastercard website does not provide the rate on weekends so I just put "n/a".

So when using the rate on posting date, the surcharge % fluctuates. Compared to previously when I used the rate as at transaction date the surcharge % was quite consistent.

Transaction date : 26/10/11
Posted date : 28/10/11
Amount charged in foreign currency : TWD5000
Amount billed in MYR : RM528.84
Rate = 0.105768
Currencies fluctuate every day. The rate shown is effective for transactions submitted to Visa on October 28, 2011, with a bank foreign transaction fee of 1%.
1 New Taiwan Dollar = 0.105506 Malaysian Ringgit
Currencies fluctuate every day. The rate shown is effective for transactions submitted to Visa on October 26, 2011, with a bank foreign transaction fee of 1%.
1 New Taiwan Dollar = 0.105025 Malaysian Ringgit

Barring intra-day movements, Maybank may charging abt 1% now

Actually I have detected an increase in rate on Maybank's part since Nov but only when Gen-X pointed out the fine print on the back of the MBB VI's statement did I jump into action.

I still need some MBB Visa (none VI) data to come to a conclusion of my analysis. Only rule is it must be a USD transaction.

Mod,
please add the following links to the first post

Mastercard Global Forex Rates - Thanks jchong!

Old Amex US Forex Website (does not work) - outsourced to Oanda?

Amex AU Forex Rates - outsourced to fx4you (not safe to be taken as internal Amex rate)

I made one USD transaction in October using my MBB2 Master. Hope it helps in your tabulation.

Maybankard2 Master
Transaction date : 5 October 2011
Posted date : 5 October 2011
Amount charged in foreign currency : USD 21.05
Amount billed in MYR : RM 67.85
Final exchange rate : USD1 = RM 3.2233

Mastercard rate on 5 October 2011:  RM 3.1815
Charges: 1.013%