Visa Cross Border Fee?

[bomber317]

Has anybody seen this before?

I opened a RBC US Access account so I could get a US Visa card.

This way, I can purchase some US funds when the rate is good, and just use my US Visa card for the States to avoid the currency exchange fee. (still have to pay the bank their currency exchange fee)

But then I used it on a paypal transaction. The charge was in USD, so I used my US Visa. But then I get hit with a 3% Cross Border Fee?!?! wtf.

Googling it, I found out the fee gets charged when your originating bank is a different country than the merchant's even if there is no currency exchange.

I don't get the reasoning for this? And how can they justify that charge?

[octothorp]

Yeah, we looked into getting the CIBC equivalent for our small business because we travel to the US a lot and occasionally need to do other US transactions. It turned out to be far better to just stop in at a bank when we were in the US and get an actual US bank account.

[Jedi Ninja]

I believe PayPal does it's own currency exchange and processes the transaction in Canada, which generally saves you money versus having the currency exchange done by the credit card company. So, essentially, it was like using your US credit card in Canada. I think you would need to open a US Paypal account in order to have your balance transacted in US$.

[squiggs96]

I have a USD VISA at both TD CanadaTrust in Canada and Sterling Savings in Washington. I never use PayPal for USD charges as these fees always pop up. If you pay for US charges with a Canadian credit card you will be charged a 2.5% fee above the rate. Some US companies will only sell and/or deliver to the States with a US based credit card, so that's why I have both. PayPal won't even let me withdraw US cash as I have a Canadian address. I asked for a withdrawal as a USD cheque as most of my balance was in USD, but they said no.