As I understand it, comparing rates really depends on what you're comparing to.
I don't know of any way an individual, for personal purchases, can get a wholesale exchange rate. Which means comparing the Visa exchange rate - a consumer rate - with a wholesale rate (which is what you'd hear on the news, for example) isn't really a fair comparison.
Instead, you need to compare Visa's rates to other consumer rates (since that's all that a consumer can get). These rates are, by their very nature, marked-up from the wholesale rate. But that doesn't mean that you're paying an extra fee when you pay the Visa exchange rate. It just means that you're purchasing your foreign currency from Visa, rather than from your bank or the airport kiosk.
And, when you compare to other consumer rates, credit card consumer forex rates are extremely competitive. So if your alternative, when shopping overseas, is to use cash, traveller's cheque or debit - you're actually likely to be dealing with a more favorable exchange rate when you use the Visa rate. They "mark it up less", so to speak.
The only way that I'm aware of to avoid mark-up on exchange rates altogether is to either gain access to wholesale currency exchange, or to pay (e.g.) on a US card from a US bank which has money stored in US funds. But unless you are getting those funds from a US source, you're still going to be dealing with the bank's consumer exchange rate to deposit the money in the first place.
/shrug At this point, I think it's likely semantics anyway. And not really germane to the question of which credit card is the best to get - just more an observation that for foreign currencies, credit card consumer forex rates (not including transaction fees) are usually a pretty "good" deal, all things considered.
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