Apologies for the gravedig. What Bank issued your card?
I’m also looking for a traveling credit card, with no foreign transaction fee. I want to be able to use the card in the US, Europe, Taiwan and most of Asia as well as hit an ATM for some local currency.
I’m digging on my own but will absolutely accept suggestions. Thanks.
Side note: using a credit card at an ATM to withdraw cash absolutely trashes your credit history. I’ve known people to have mortgages rejected due to this.
if you pay for streaming services, you get $20/months in credits.
Uber $15/month, $30 in Dec. I use this for Uber eats.
$200 airline credits (not for tickets)
that by itself is $640 I use every year, which puts it close for me
if you travel, they pay for global entry and clear.
that put it over the top. then I get added benefits like lounge access on Delta and priority club when travelling.
there’s other things I don’t use that you might - it pays for Walmart+ ($155/yr or something), amex travel services (I used this once, at the andaz in Maui. good benefits booking through amex).
Yeah, I got the Eva air platinum. 36.8k p.a. it is steep but id u use the perks wisely u get a lot of value. Many small perks which r not advertised but very useful
Earn 80,000 Membership Rewards® Points after you spend $6,000 on purchases on the Card in your first 6 months of Card Membership.
Earn 5X Membership Rewards® Points for flights booked directly with airlines or with American Express Travel up to $500,000 on these purchases per calendar year and earn 5X Membership Rewards® Points on prepaid hotels booked with American Express Travel.
$200 Hotel Credit: Get up to $200 back in statement credits each year on prepaid Fine Hotels + Resorts® or The Hotel Collection bookings with American Express Travel when you pay with your Platinum Card®.
$240 Digital Entertainment Credit: Get up to $20 in statement credits each month when you pay for eligible purchases with the Platinum Card® at your choice of one or more of the following providers: Disney+, ESPN+, Hulu, The New York Times, Peacock, SiriusXM, and The Wall Street Journal. Enrollment required.
$155 Walmart+ Credit: Walmart+ members enjoy shopping perks – both online and in-store – at Walmart. Use your Platinum Card® to pay for a monthly Walmart+ membership (subject to auto-renewal) and receive a statement credit that covers the full cost each month. $12.95 plus applicable taxes. Plus Up Benefits not eligible.
$200 Airline Fee Credit: Select one qualifying airline and then receive up to $200 in statement credits per calendar year when incidental fees are charged by the airline to your Card.
$200 Uber Cash: Enjoy Uber VIP status and up to $200 in Uber savings on rides or eats orders in the US annually. Uber Cash and Uber VIP status is available to Basic Card Member only. Benefit renews annually.
$300 Equinox Credit: Get up to $300 back per calendar year on an Equinox+ subscription, or any Equinox club memberships when you pay with your Platinum Card®. Enrollment required. Learn more.
$189 CLEAR® Plus Credit: Breeze through security with CLEAR® Plus at 45+ airports nationwide and get up to $189 back per year on your membership (subject to auto-renewal) when you use your Platinum Card®.
$100 Global Entry Credit: Receive either a $100 statement credit every 4 years for a Global Entry application fee or a statement credit up to $85 every 4.5 years for a TSA PreCheck® (through a TSA official enrollment provider) application fee, when charged to your Platinum Card®. Card Members approved for Global Entry will also receive access to TSA PreCheck at no additional cost.
Shop Saks with Platinum: Get up to $50 in statement credits semi-annually for purchases at Saks Fifth Avenue on your Platinum Card®. Enrollment required.
$300 SoulCycle At-Home Bike Credit: Get a $300 statement credit for the purchase of a SoulCycle at-home bike with your Platinum Card®. Must charge full price of bike in one transaction, and an Equinox+ subscription is required.
Add your Platinum Card® to your Resy profile on the Resy app or website and unlock Global Dining Access by Resy to exclusive tables and events.
$695 annual fee.
Terms Apply.
And I may return to it if I find my post-grind worklife evolves to something busier than I foresee. But yeah, that is truly a step up in the world of travel for sure. If I had a business which involved constant travel, I’d definitely get one.
As it stands, the premier Citi card is my top prospect.
Thanks to all who replied. This what I truly enjoy about this place. Xie xie, xie xie.
Sort of thread-jacking with a different question that doesn’t seem worth a thread: should I use my Taiwanese credit card when I’m in Canada, versus my Canadian card? How much do I “lose” by using a credit card in a foreign currency? How do the exchange rates work?
Specifically: my Taiwan CTBC credit card gives me 2.8% back in LINE points for purchases in foreign currencies (LINE points are equivalent to cash at many places). My Canadian credit card gives me 0.5% back in points. CTBC wins at this stage, no problem.
But with CTBC there’s also a 1.5% service charge for international transactions. I feel like I’m missing an obvious step with the math, but to me that means CTBC is net 1.3% “cash” back, which still wins over 0.5%. My remaining question is how much I lose on exchange rates, and how I can figure that out.
So is using my Taiwanese CTBC card when I’m in Canada a better deal than using my Canadian credit card?
Like you said, you’d really need to check how much they’re robbing you on the exchange rate. Between that and the international transaction fee, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s enough to cancel out the benefit. I’m still annoyed at CTBC for charging me an international transaction fee for buying in TWD from the Taiwan Google Store. None of my UK banks do shit like that.
So you’ll probably need to ask CTBC or read the terms and conditions for your card. Good luck with that.
Yeah, that’s just it of course … I’ve got the statements and I know how much they charged me for the transactions, but I don’t know how to figure out the difference / surcharge between that and the “base” rate for that day. The exchange rate itself isn’t printed on the statement, unfortunately, although maybe the process is somewhere in the small print.
EDIT: also part of the calculations is that a lot of that money in Canada has already gone through conversion once, from Taiwan dollars to Canadian.
I’ve always thought that credit cards give better exchange rates than cash or ATMs, although that’s quite likely based on something a not-necessarily-informed person told me long ago. It looks like I’m not off on that, although just what the rates are remain unclear to me:
Each credit card purchase includes a foreign transaction fee, usually around 2.5 per cent. Eventually that can weigh on the pocketbook, but it’s lower than most ATM and debit card fees (source).
EDIT 2: one page says “A currency conversion fee is typically 1% of the purchase price”. But that “typically” leaves a lot of room from bank to bank.
You should be able to calculate it if you’ve got records of previous transactions. I’m assuming your credit card is either Mastercard or Visa, and IIRC both publish their historical exchange rates (I imagine other credit card networks do too).
I’m guessing the 1.5% service charge will be billed separately, so you’d just need to divide the TWD amount by the CAD amount and compare that with the historical Mastercard/Visa exchange rate for that day. If you do that for several transactions (ideally larger ones), you should be able to see if there’s any percentage loading applied to the Mastercard/Visa rate.
It’s possible there might not be, if they use the Mastercard/Visa rate and recoup the fees through the service charge. It’s also possible they might apply a 1-2% loading to the exchange rate.
I think a lot of this varies considerably from bank to bank and country to country. Nowadays I mostly use my UK debit cards from newer banks that just charge the Mastercard or Interbank rate with no loading (and no service charge), but I’ve had debit/credit cards with all combinations of fee structures. ATM withdrawals are also fine on these cards (there’s no difference actually, at least for my use case - same exchange rate and no fees).
Yeah, that complicates things. For that, I guess you’d want to compare the typical TWD/CAD rates for wire transfers and credit card purchases…
Hmm. I’ve done this for a few different transactions over the past few months, using Visa’s exchange rate calculator here (which does have historical rates as well), and as far as I can tell the additional loading is … zero, allowing for rounding? (No particularly high-value transactions, so the math will be off.) So that’s reassuring.
And trying to figure out how much Visa charges: their page tells me on 2023/03/31, their rate was 1USD = 30.496000 TWD. XE.com tells me on the same date the rate was 1USD = 30.49246. Which … seems reassuringly close?
EDIT: Ha … playing with numbers in a spreadsheet, and assuming I spent as much as I did last summer, the difference between cash back with my Canadian credit card & my Taiwanese credit card would still “only” be around TWD$800, assuming the costs & benefits above are correct. Which isn’t nothing, but isn’t a lot either.
