FX fees and markups when you pay abroad with a crypto card

What happens when you tap

Say your card is in euros and you pay a bill in a country that uses another currency. Behind that one tap, up to three things happen:

1. Your crypto is sold. Your balance is in a stablecoin or another asset, and the card needs money in its own currency. That sale has a price, and the card company may add a margin to it.
2. The payment is converted. The shop charges in its own currency. The card network converts that into your card’s currency at its own rate for the day.
3. Fees are applied. The issuer may add a fee for paying in a foreign currency, and the shop or ATM may add its own.

If the card’s currency already matches the shop’s currency, step 2 and its costs disappear. If your balance is already in the card’s currency, step 1 is much smaller. This is why the same card can be cheap in one place and expensive in another.

The four costs, one by one

The exchange rate itself

Card networks publish a rate that is close to the wholesale rate between two currencies. It is usually a fair starting point, and it changes every day. You do not choose it. What you can check is how far the rate you were charged sits from the mid-market rate on the day.

The FX fee

An FX fee is a line item the card charges when you pay in a currency other than the card’s own. It is normally a percentage of the payment. It shows up in the issuer’s fee table, and it is the number most people compare.

The FX markup

An FX markup is a margin added to the exchange rate instead of being listed as a fee. You never see a line called “markup”. You only see a rate that is a little worse than it should be. Some cards advertise “no FX fee” and recover part of the cost here. Because it is hidden in the rate, it is the cost people miss most often.

The conversion spread on your crypto

When the card sells your crypto to pay, the price it uses is rarely the market price. The gap is the conversion spread. It is charged on every payment funded from crypto, whether you are at home or abroad. A card that sells from a stablecoin tends to have a small gap. A card that sells from a volatile asset is exposed to the price moving between the moment you decide to spend and the moment the card sells.

The trap: converting twice

Suppose your card’s currency is euros and you hold a US dollar stablecoin. Paying a euro bill converts dollars to euros inside the card. Paying in a third currency can convert dollars to euros first, and then euros to the local currency. Each step carries a rate, and possibly a fee.

When you can, pick a card whose currency is the one you spend most. Or hold the balance in the same currency as the card, so the crypto sale step costs less. The aim is fewer conversions, not a lower headline fee.

Choose the local currency at the till

At a shop or ATM abroad you may be asked whether to pay in your home currency or the local one. The offer is called dynamic currency conversion. It sounds helpful and rarely is: the conversion is done by the merchant or the machine at a rate that favours them, on top of anything your card adds.

Always choose the local currency and let your card do the conversion. The same goes for ATMs. An ATM fee can come from the operator on the screen and from your card on the statement, and they are two separate charges.

How to compare two cards fairly

Put the costs side by side in the same order, for the same situation:

• What currency is the card in, and does that match where you spend?
• Is there an FX fee, and is it flat or a percentage?
• What does the issuer say about the rate it uses, and does it say anything about a margin?
• What does the card charge to convert crypto, and which assets does it sell from?
• Are there ATM fees or limits that matter for your trip?
• Is anything free only up to a monthly limit, and what happens above it?

If a page does not answer a question, treat that as unknown. On our card pages, a fee we have not verified reads “Not verified”. It is never shown as zero, because a missing fee is not the same as no fee.

Check your own statement

Whatever a fee table says, your statement is the final proof. After a first small payment abroad, compare the amount charged with the shop’s price converted at the mid-market rate for that day. The difference is the sum of the costs above. If it is more than the fee table suggests, the gap is usually a markup or a spread.

Where the numbers on this site come from

Fees on our card pages come from the issuer’s own pages, with a source and a last checked date. The Finder turns them into one estimated cost for your country and your spending, and says which fees were left out because they are not verified. You can see how that works in the methodology and try it in the Card Finder.

This page does not name any card’s fee on purpose. A fee quoted in a guide goes stale. A fee read from live data does not.