If you’ve used a credit card to make an international purchase, a recent class-action lawsuit now enables you to recoup some of the fees that your credit card company may have charged you.

The lawsuit concerns the way that credit card companies including Visa, MasterCard, and Diners Club charged fees to customers for making foreign currency transactions. These transactions include internet and online purchases made in a foreign currency. The key complaint revolved around the way these companies disclosed (or as defendants argued — did not disclose) fees charged for foreign currency transactions. Typically the fee ranged between 1-3%, but the lawsuit alleged that some credit card issuers also inflated the base exchange rate before adding the fees. The plaintiffs including Bank of America, Bank One/First USA, Chase, Citibank, MBNA, HSBC/Household, and Washington Mutual/Providian all deny wrongdoing but have agreed to settle the case nonetheless.

This is great news for you if you’ve traveled internationally and made an foreign currency credit card transaction in the last 10 years — or if you’ve purchased products or services from international merchants who billed you in a foreign currency! Even better, the claims process is relatively straight forward. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Make sure you’re eligible. (See above).
2. Download claims form here. Or fill out this online form.
3. Sit back and wait for your check to arrive in the mail.

That’s it! Yes, it’s probably going to take a while for you to see the money, but it’s still money in your pocket.

Keep us posted with your experiences!

We’ve received quite a few reader requests over the past few weeks to include ATM and debit card foreign transaction fees in our directory of foreign transaction fees. Unlike the already complex foreign transaction fee structure that credit cards charge, debit cards pose even additional challenges when determining the exact fee to be charged for withdrawing foreign currency. This is for 2 reasons:

1) ATMs. In addition to the transaction fee charged for converting currency, there are also ATM network fees that might be assessed. These fees vary from card to card and change frequently. You may have to pay a network fee to the bank that owns the ATM in the country you are visiting. Since this is not a fee that your bank charges, your bank will not be able to tell you what this fee is in advance.
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Find the latest international exchange rate quotes here. This page details not only the best places to find reliable quotes, but also news sources to help you determine when to make currency purchases.
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Below are various ATM finders that will do searches for Automatic Teller Machines around the world. These include Visa, MasterCard and American Express. These machines also preform searches for airport ATMs and cards in the Cirrus and Plus networks. If you are using an ATM locator not hosted by your card company, never enter in your card number or PIN. ATM locators do not need this information when searching for ATM locations.
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We’ve posted a long list of credit card foreign transaction fees for many popular credit cards. Though it is possible to get fee rates as low as 1% with Visa or MasterCard while traveling abroad, it is very important to keep an eye on those Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) fees. To avoid DCC entirely, American Express cards are the only option. Discover cards can’t be accessed DCC, but they aren’t widely accepted internationally either. Click here to see the full list of individual credit card foreign transaction fees.

When it comes to making international purchases with a credit card, there are a number of ways uninformed travelers get hit with additional fees. “Dynamic conversion” is a new option for travelers to be aware of – especially since it that can add exponentially more to the overall price of the purchase. In fact, the fees can be so extreme that some consumer advocates have taken to calling “dynamic currency conversion” a scam. Although fees are added to the purchase in such a way that consumers have almost no way of knowing the actual total fee paid, the practice is legal almost everywhere in the world.
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