That sounds about right. I don’t think Visa charges you (i.e., the customer) for the transaction. I think they charge the bank, which is what CTBC is passing on to you with the service charge (at least that’s what CTBC told me; again, my UK banks don’t do this).
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Mega Bank’s USD/TWD card says this, but I don’t really get what it’s trying to express (seems like they charge it anyway if the card is used overseas):
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Yes: what’s often apparently unclear is the foreign transaction fee (what the bank just charges for using a different currency) versus the currency conversion fee. It looks like (based on random googling this morning) some banks have a “hidden” currency conversion fee that you can figure out by comparing the rate they charge you versus the spot rates for the day. Other banks fold the currency conversion fee into the foreign transaction fee - it looks like that what CTBC does, to my mild and pleasant surprise.
The network charges the issuer an assessment fee for each non domestic transaction. Usually it’s 1%. That’s it. So the issuer wants ofc to recover that.
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I wonder if the 1% is with debit cards and 1.5% for credit cards and banks are just recovering the fee?
99.9% of the time the issuer uses networks infrastructure for the conversions, so the network bakes in the conversion into the assessment fee to the issuer, which then the issuer passes to the cardholder. Even when u make a, let’s, TWD transaction abroad u r still charged the crossborder fee, since it is based on merchant location, not currency.
This explain this:
Some aggressive issuers decide not to charge the crossborder fee as promotional tool, they r eating the 1% fee from the network up and have their interchange profit share going down, so they rely on volume for profitability.
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Debit and credit cards are different products, credit card r most expensive to issuers (and also more profitable). So they have different fees. Also, with credit cards, u need to bake in the risk of not recovering the funds from the cardholders, which is an externality. Debit is straight taken out of ur account, the cash is already into the issuer pockets.
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That’s what I’m thinking
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there is an official Visa FX tool which also can factor in the issuer fee:
https://usa.visa.com/support/consumer/travel-support/exchange-rate-calculator.html
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Yeah, the point was that it would have been cheaper for me to use my UK card than it was to use my CTBC card, to make a purchase in TWD from the Taiwan Google Store, which is just silly. It wasn’t a tiny amount either - I had to pay an extra NT$300 to use my local card. I won’t be making that mistake again!
The store should at least make it clear they’re billing from abroad.
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well, each time u use uber here it is a foreign transaction too since Uber is located as a merchant in the Netherlands.
Google for AP is based in Singapore. It is reported under the terms of sale here: Google Store Terms of Sale for Devices
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I don’t use Uber with my Taiwanese cards either - no reason to.
Yeah, I’m sure everyone is reading the terms of sale every time they make an online purchase. 
That isn’t “the store making it clear they’re billing from abroad”, IMO. Making it clear would be a little note on the order and/or payment pages under the final amount saying something like “Payments are processed by Google blah blah Singapore”.
They r obliged to disclose, they did, it is on their main webpage down there. There is no legal requirement to disclose anywhere else or to make it “easier” to customer to find this out.
They r following the law. Laziness is no excuse IMHO.
I do believe u have used the 3DS SMS OTP before completing the transaction, there u could have seen that the merchant is not a TW company by the name and the amount to be authorised was not matching with the bare sale price. U could have stopped there before proceeding and not completing the purchase.
I didn’t say they’d done anything illegal, did I? I said I think they should make it clear in this situation that they’re billing as a foreign company. It wasn’t clear in my opinion. If you disagree, that’s fine. 
You’re wrong on this. The international transaction fee was charged separately, and the only SMS notification from CTBC had the purchase amount not the purchase amount plus fee. I’ve just checked.
No different price was displayed during purchase. Do you think I’m not going to notice something like that? Of course I would. You’re not the only person to have ever bought something online, lol.
Ok, the ctbc does something different then what we do.
With my company the amount to be authorised is shown immediately consolidated with the fee.
Never used ctbc for an online foreign transaction, different issuers different ways