Tip of the Day - Sending Credit Cards to India

Tip of the Day
Credit cards to India
Many of us send a add-on card to parents who live back home in India for their convinence and usage. Nowadays most retail outlets, travel agencies, gas stations ( or should i say petrol bunks) accept Creditcards.
As a matter of practice i have been using this service for about 5+ years and have changed Card providers for various reasons including false fraud alerts that declines transactions in India often.
One major factor i consider is the Foreign Transaction fee ( or exchange rate adjustment) or whatever the bank/card provide wants to innovatively call it
Read this link below --
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/cc/20050624b1.asp
Visa/ Master charges 1% for servicing the foreign transaction and card providers add a heavy 2% on top and used to charge 3%
Enter WAMU - then i found WAMU that gave add on cards to be used in India for 1% fee.
Well they went belly up and Chase bought them to change policy to3% ( i used to have add on Chase cards to begin with)
Also WAMU would only add 1 additional card per account - well that was a useless rule !!!!!!

Finally after some more research found CAPITAL ONE, the super market for Cards
CAP ONE gives you Master card ( i know visa is preferred in india...) that can be used in India for ZERO percent foreign transaction fee
Yes ZERO, i dont know how they do it as it means they need to suck up the 1% charged by Mastercard.

But as you can imagine, i care less, my transactions made by FAMILY from india at 50 to 51rs a dollar with Zero percent conversion fee looks really good

Now will you save money using this TIP

Post your comments