This might get long so I’m going to give you a breakdown of what I’ll be talking about: Today’s listed exchange rate, today’s Mastercard exchange rate, 2% currency conversion fee, adding this all up you’ll see my true conversion rate.

I know some people have been curious about the conversion rate when you withdrawal from an ATM using your Visa Debit Card or Mastercard Debit Card. MC and Visa are supposed to give you fair exchange rates from what I’ve heard. Today I used my Mastercard to withdrawl funds from my U.S. bank and here’s the breakdown of charges and rates.

Today’s USD to Yen rate from www.xe.com is
1 USD = 114. .735 JPY

The actual rate I received
1 USD = 114.23 JPY

Not bad! But then my bank charged me 1% to do the currency conversion and Mastercard (as well as Visa) charges a 1% fee. So if I withdrawal 11,000 Yen my account would reflect a $96.30 withdrawal amount, a bank fee of $0.96 and a Mastercard fee of $0.96. That means for 11,000 Yen I was actually hit for $98.22 and in reality if you include the 2% in fees my true exchange rate from the ATM resulted in 112Yen per $1 USD.

Is this a good deal? Continue reading ‘ATM Currency Conversion’