Thank you to the charter yacht Hanalei Bay for giving me this heads up, which I'm now passing on to you...
Diane told us that they knew of someone who received a hefty foreign transaction fee for paying their BVI marina bill with their credit card. This was for a charge in US Dollars in the British Virgin Islands (the BVIs don't have their own currency and use US$). She said that some cards started instituting this new policy on June 1st of this year.
I thought (and hoped) that maybe it was just a misunderstanding of his tale of woe at cocktail hour, but decided to check my MasterCard statement. Wow! MasterCard charged a 3% fee for my Cost-U-Less purchase in St Maarten which is also in US Dollars. They never charged anything before for the Dutch side.
We've always been charged something for using credit cards on the French side of St Martin which is understandable since their currency is Euros.
My Visa statement seemed normal at that time, but I just checked it this morning and note that we are now being charged a foreign transaction fee for US Dollar purchases on the Dutch side as well, albeit it at a lower rate of 1%.
Guess which card I'm going to be using when necessary...
So It Goes...
