How to avoid FX fees on crypto cards
If you spend in a currency your card doesn’t settle in, you’ll usually pay an FX fee, and it can easily cost more than the cashback you earn. Here’s how it works and how to keep it down.
2 min read
In this guide3 sections
What an FX fee is
When you pay in a currency different from the one your card settles in, Visa and Mastercard charge a cross-border fee of about 1%, and most card companies pass it on. So a card that advertises “0% FX” usually means nothing on top of that 1%, not nothing at all. Some add their own markup, or a conversion fee on every purchase, as well. Only a few say in their terms that they cover the network’s fee.
On top of that, Visa and Mastercard convert at their own exchange rate, which in our own tests ran about 0.3% worse than the real one. It never shows up as a fee, but you pay it all the same.
- Cashback
- +$10
- The FX fee (Visa’s 1%, passed on)
- −$10
- The network’s exchange rate (about 0.3%)
- −$3
- You end up
- $3 behind
That makes FX one of the most important things to check when you compare cards, and one of the most overlooked.
It depends on the card’s currency, not your country
What triggers the fee is paying in a currency that’s different from the card’s own. So the same card can cost one person nothing and the next person 1% on everything.
| You spend US dollars | You spend euros | |
|---|---|---|
| Card settles in US dollars | No FX fee | FX fee |
| Card settles in euros | FX fee | No FX fee |
Our country pages show what that means where you live.
How to keep it low
- Pick a card that settles in the currency you spend most.
- Or pick one whose terms say you pay no FX or cross-border fee at all, not just “0% FX” in the marketing. Our no FX fee list only includes those.
- Watch out for “0% FX” cards that make it back with a worse rate when they convert your crypto at checkout.
- When you travel, always pay in the local currency. More on that in our guide to spending abroad.
Our rankings include each card’s FX cost for where you spend, so the order already takes it into account.
See what each card pays back at your spend.
Open the calculator