On other normal purchases, Bigpay's currency conversions were excellent.

May be you allowed Raphael's to do the conversion which was bad instead of letting Bigpay doing it?

Any way the general advise is to always use the local currency, in this case sterling, when overseas. Especially merchants.


From their website:
A: Raphaels Bank offers a service known as Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC). This means that when an eligible card is identified as coming from outside the UK, we will offer to carry out conversion of the transaction value into the currency associated with the card. You will be presented with the applicable exchange rate and the total amount to be debited from your account. If you choose not to allow Raphaels Bank to carry out the conversion, the transaction will proceed in sterling and the conversion will be carried out by your card issuer.

This post has been edited by touristking: Jul 18 2018, 11:03 PM

He says he did in pounds though. Maybe they charge a fee (9.5% is super high though).

Visa down again?

Thanks for highlighting that!

Seems yes... tried visa can’t, MasterCard ok no problem...

Yor...Another milestone Bigpay achieved.. very unstable e wallet.. how to dorminant in the market...

Visa 2 (leading) vs master 1 😘😘😘

Wow thanks for extra insight for my case.
Yes there is no option for me to choose or whatsoever.
Therefore bigpay CS mentioned some bank do trick customer with their info print page to accept the DCC.
Anyway i learnt my lesson. I will withdraw money from a more common bank when i'm in oversea rather than withdraw from airport.

so VISA card top up is not my problem then
Was trying in the whole morning often failed

The reason you are charged such exorbitant sum is that you used those ATM owned by Money Changer! Yes... Rafael’s Bank is a money changer. No difference than the likes of Travelex, MoneyCorp or ICE. Those ATM will at most time DCCed all transactions!

Sorry for my short of insight on money changer / ATM / bank.
Anyway i have made loss already and it's past.
I learn from my mistakes at least and learn new things from forumer here.

lots of these at petrol stations now as well
just say MEPS/master/visa without bank's name

Try top up using visa and master..
All failed this morning....

Look around and I think there are also proper bank's ATM machine in airports. Well, at least some have.

What I do is, if I arrive in a totally foreign country and see an ATM machine with unfamiliar names, I will Google to make sure it's a proper bank. When on the streets, I will always try to draw money from an ATM machine located inside a bank premises. Just in case anything happens like card being withheld or ATM being tampered with etc. Can't be too careful.

Hey guys, sorry I was away for a few days We're going to release a Fair Usage Policy soon, so it'll all be cleared up. When it comes to FX and rates when withdrawing money from the ATM and all that, there's a blog post + infrographic going out either today or tomorrow that explains in details all the currency exchange mechanisms.

This post has been edited by BigPayJonathan: Jul 19 2018, 12:10 PM

guys which ATM can dispense the most in a single transaction ?
I heard dual-function CDM/ATM can dispense up to 99 notes ? Anyone experienced this ?
Anyone even been to an ATM that can dispense more than 3k ?

Thanks again for the advice.
I was thinking the same thing of withdrawing a commonly known bank.
Till the next trip oversea then.

can't wait for the FUP.

Top up page keep scanning and give connection error…

i called ocbc. their cash rebate is not paid to you all in one month. it's divided by 2 (current month and another one is on next month). ocbc cs also told me that bigpay is not considered as online transaction. hence only 0.1%. this is because i checked my statement, there is no 1% rebate. only 0.1%

Some may be interested - I topped up BigPay at 12:30 am on 17th July and the transaction date shows 17th July (not 16th July) so confirm local gateway. This may be useful for those chasing limited/FCFS.