Best_Vacation_EVER!
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 30, 2005
Don't know about all banks, but the cross-border plans at TD charge a "preferred rate" for transfers to the US$ side.
So I checked their daily rates. The current counter rate for US exchanges was approximately 3%. The preferred rate for cross-border account holders was (you guessed it) 2.5%. Exactly the same rate as Visa charges all its customers.
That is the fallacy of these US$ cards. Unless you have a source of US$ income (US work or rental income), you are still going to pay an additional forex fee.
We do have some local currency exchanges that allow you to convert with a rate that is almost as good as what the Amazon card offered and worlds better than my regular CDN credit cards for USD purchases. We always buy USD cash before we go anyway... so my thought was to get a USD credit card then buy USD $ from the currency exchange at the better rate then apply the USD to the USD credit card at the branch before we leave.
I called our bank and asked a very simple question.... if I walk into my local branch with my USD cash in my hand will you deposit that USD cash payment to a USD credit card with no additional exchange or fees added ... They couldn't answer that very specific question.
We may just go for the Rogers one as well...